[U-Boot] Memset 0 in heap initialization?

[Kumar Gala]

On Jan 17, 2011, at 11:17 PM, Dirk Behme wrote:

> On 09.12.2010 17:14, Dirk Behme wrote:
>> 
>> In common/dlmalloc.c in the heap initialization mem_malloc_init() [1]
>> it looks like the whole heap is initialized with zero:
>> 
>> memset((void *)mem_malloc_start, 0, size);
>> 
>> What's the reason for doing this? I know that the .bss segment has to
>> be zeroed at system start up, but why doing this for the heap, too? It
>> was my understanding that one could make no assumption about the
>> initial content of memory returned by malloc() (?).
>> 
>> Sorry if I miss the obvious ;)
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Dirk
>> 
>> [1]
>> http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot.git;a=blob;f=common/dlmalloc.c;h=e9bab09b8eac7c0ec4900a3685f15a807b448c31;hb=refs/heads/master#l1529
> 
> Any idea regarding this?

Part of this is because we define MORECORE_CLEARS 1 which does assume memory is zero'd out.

- k