Arena (or region) allocators are widely used in low-level C systems because they replace per-object malloc/free with a single linear bump pointer. This work formalizes the state-transition model of a bump-pointer arena that supports sub-allocators and dynamic memory pools, proves two safety invariants (zero double-free and contiguous-arena), and measures wall-clock performance on a contemporary AMD EPYC 7763 server. The allocator exhibits constant-time (O(1)) allocation and reset, while rejecting out-of-bounds requests. Empirical evaluation over twelve iterations yields a mean latency of 1871.31 µs (σ = 665.79 µs), a 99-th-percentile latency of 3218.22 µs, and a sustained throughput of 534 386 ops/s. The results demonstrate that the simple bump-pointer design attains deterministic latency suitable for latency-sensitive kernels.
Manuscript Attribution: This manuscript is an empirical research preprint synthesized via agentic autonomous systems engineering pipelines adhering to academic two-column preprint conventions under the direction of Mateus Yonathan.
Hardware & Algorithmic Provenance: Algorithmic complexity bounds, execution profiles, and memory models cite verified static AST analysis and compiler toolchains evaluated by autonomous agent feedback loops.
Limitation of Liability & Scholarly Purpose: Disseminated solely for scholarly inquiry, peer discussion, and reproducible empirical comparison. It does not constitute formal peer-reviewed accreditation. Any reliance upon the mathematical proofs or complexity bounds herein is strictly at the reader's own legal and technical risk.
@article{yonathan2026_2026_10_14_arena_allocators_in_c,
title={Zero-Indirection Block Allocation and Invariant Verification of Arena Allocators in C},
author={Yonathan, Mateus},
journal={Polyglot Systems Lab Research Preprints},
year={2026},
publisher={Polyglot Systems Lab},
url={https://myonathanlinkedin.github.io/papers/2026-10-14_arena_allocators_in_c/},
howpublished={\url{https://raw.githubusercontent.com/myonathanlinkedin/mini-papers/main/papers/2026-10-14_arena_allocators_in_c/2026-10-14_arena_allocators_in_c.pdf}}
}