Bare Metal C

13 Dynamic Memory

Embedded systems have very limited random access memory (RAM). So far, we’ve divided the free memory into a small stack with no space left for anything else. When dealing with bigger systems, we have gigabytes of memory, making it easier to divide the memory into two sections: the stack and the heap.

We talked about the stack in Chapter 7. It’s where the program allocates local variables and temporary values for each procedure as it’s needed. The heap is a little different. You decide when memory is allocated from the heap as well as when it is returned to the heap. Using the heap, you can create very complex and large ...