1

A method for allocating memory freed by applications in a computer system having an operating system (O/S), said method comprising: a) designating a status of said one or more freed memory units previously associated with an application as available for reuse;

b) organizing one or more freed memory units having said available for reuse status into one or more free memory pools, wherein freed memory units in a pool are directly allocated to an application requiring backing physical memory store without the O/S deleting data in the freed memory units.

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2

The method as claimed in Claim 1, further comprising maintaining information about said application and said free memory pools, said information used to directly allocate said freed memory units to an application.

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3

The method as claimed in Claim 2, wherein said maintained information comprises information representing how one or more pools are organized, said one or more pools being organized according to a criteria selected from the following: a process, a user, a security context, a processor, an applications node's status as being a Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) node, or, a memory zone where fixed size freed memory units are made available.

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4

The method as claimed in Claim 3, wherein a pool is further organized according to one or more dimensions based on a combination of said criteria.

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5

The method as claimed in Claim 2, wherein prior to said designating, performing: implementing a system function to determine whether said freed memory spans one or more fixed size freed memory units in virtual memory space, said fixed size memory unit corresponding to a size of a physical memory page frame.

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6

The method as claimed in Claim 1, further comprising: receiving, by said O/S instruction to allocate memory for an application; and,

in response, said O/S determining if a pool having freed memory units available for reuse will not result in a data security breach if data included in said freed memory units of said pool is allocated to said application; and,

if no data security breach results, allocating said freed memory units of that pool to said application without the O/S expending overhead of deleting data included in said freed memory units.

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7

The method as claimed in Claim 6, wherein said determining if a pool having said freed memory units available for reuse will not result in a data security breach, is based on one or more of the following: a process, a user, or a security context, or combinations thereof.

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8

The method as claimed in Claim 6, wherein said O/S tracks freed memory units that are available system-wide, wherein if it is determined that no pool having freed memory units available for that reuse will not result in a data security breach, said method including: determining if there are any freed memory units available in system-wide free memory for allocation; and, if no freed memory units are available system-wide,

reclaiming said freed memory units from a pool.

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9

The method as claimed in Claim 8, wherein said freed memory units designated as available for reuse from a pool are reclaimed based on criteria including: a size of said free memory pool; an allocation rate from the pool; a rate at which memory is freed into the pool; a net allocation rate of the pool; and a length of time memory has been assigned to the pool, or combinations of these.

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10

The method as claimed in Claim 8, further comprising: determining whether freed memory units marked as available for reuse in a free memory pool are available for reclaiming and, if it is determined that freed memory units marked as available for reuse from a free memory pool are not available for reclaiming, said O/S further:

designating the freed memory units as no longer being available for reuse; and,

removing the freed memory unit from the free memory pool.

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