Memory<T> and Span<T> usage guidelines

10/01/2018

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.NET Core includes a number of types that represent an arbitrary contiguous region of memory. .NET Core 2.0 introduced Span<T> and ReadOnlySpan<T>, which are lightweight memory buffers that can be backed by managed or unmanaged memory. Because these types can only be stored on the stack, they are unsuitable for a number of scenarios, including asynchronous method calls. .NET Core 2.1 adds a number of additional types, including Memory<T>, ReadOnlyMemory<T>, IMemoryOwner<T>, and MemoryPool<T>. Like Span<T>, Memory<T> and its related types can be backed by both managed and unmanaged memory. Unlike Span<T>, Memory<T> can be stored on the managed heap.

Both Span<T> and Memory<T> are buffers of structured data that can be used in pipelines. That is, they are designed so that some or all of the data can be efficiently passed to components in the pipeline, which can process them and optionally modify the buffer. Because Memory<T> and its related types can be accessed by multiple components or by multiple threads, it's important that developers follow some standard usage guidelines to produce robust code.

Owners, consumers, and lifetime management

Since buffers can be passed around between APIs, and since buffers can sometimes be accessed from multiple threads, it's important to consider lifetime management. There are three core concepts:

Ownership . The owner of a buffer instance is responsible for lifetime management, including destroying the buffer when it's no longer in use. All buffers have a single owner. Generally the owner is the component that created the buffer or that received the buffer from a factory. Ownership can also be transferred; Component-A can relinquish control of the buffer to Component-B , at which point Component-A may no longer use the buffer, and Component-B becomes responsible for destroying the buffer when it's no longer in use.

Consumption . The consumer of a buffer instance is allowed to use the buffer instance by reading from it and possibly writing to it. Buffers can have one consumer at a time unless some external synchronization mechanism is provided. The active consumer of a buffer isn't necessarily the buffer's owner.

Lease. The lease is the length of time that a particular component is allowed to be the consumer of the buffer.

The following pseudo-code example illustrates these three concepts. It includes a Main method that instantiates a Memory<T> buffer of type Char, calls the WriteInt32ToBuffer method to write the string representation of an integer to the buffer, and then calls the DisplayBufferToConsole method to display the value of the buffer.

using System; class Program { // Write 'value' as a human-readable string to the output buffer. void WriteInt32ToBuffer(int value, Buffer buffer); // Display the contents of the buffer to the console. void DisplayBufferToConsole(Buffer buffer); // Application code static void Main() { var buffer = CreateBuffer(); try { int value = Int32.Parse(Console.ReadLine()); WriteInt32ToBuffer(value, buffer); DisplayBufferToConsole(buffer); } finally { buffer.Destroy(); } } }

The Main method creates the buffer (in this case an Span<T> instance) and so is its owner. Therefore, Main is responsible for destroying the buffer when it's no longer in use. It does this by calling the buffer's Span<T>.Clear() method. (The Clear() method here actually clears the buffer's memory; the Span<T> structure doesn't actually have a method that destroys the buffer.)

The buffer has two consumers, WriteInt32ToBuffer and DisplayBufferToConsole . There is only one consumer at a time (first WriteInt32ToBuffer , then DisplayBufferToConsole ), and neither of the consumers owns the buffer. Note also that "consumer" in this context doesn't imply a read-only view of the buffer; consumers can modify the buffer's contents, as WriteInt32ToBuffer does, if given a read/write view of the buffer.

The WriteInt32ToBuffer method has a lease on (can consume) the buffer between the start of the method call and the time the method returns. Similarly, DisplayBufferToConsole has a lease on the buffer while it's executing, and the lease is released when the method unwinds. (There is no API for lease management; a "lease" is a conceptual matter.)

Memory<T> and the owner/consumer model

As the Owners, consumers, and lifetime management section notes, a buffer always has an owner. .NET Core supports two ownership models:

A model that supports single ownership. A buffer has a single owner for its entire lifetime.

A model that supports ownership transfer. Ownership of a buffer can be transferred from its original owner (its creator) to another component, which then becomes responsible for the buffer's lifetime management. That owner can in turn transfer ownership to another component, and so on.

You use the System.Buffers.IMemoryOwner<T> interface to explicitly manage the ownership of a buffer. IMemoryOwner<T> supports both ownership models. The component that has an IMemoryOwner<T> reference owns the buffer. The following example uses an IMemoryOwner<T> instance to reflect the ownership of a Memory<T> buffer.

using System; using System.Buffers; class Example { static void Main() { IMemoryOwner<char> owner = MemoryPool<char>.Shared.Rent(); Console.Write("Enter a number: "); try { var value = Int32.Parse(Console.ReadLine()); var memory = owner.Memory; WriteInt32ToBuffer(value, memory); DisplayBufferToConsole(owner.Memory.Slice(0, value.ToString().Length)); } catch (FormatException) { Console.WriteLine("You did not enter a valid number."); } catch (OverflowException) { Console.WriteLine($"You entered a number less than {Int32.MinValue:N0} or greater than {Int32.MaxValue:N0}."); } finally { owner?.Dispose(); } } static void WriteInt32ToBuffer(int value, Memory<char> buffer) { var strValue = value.ToString(); var span = buffer.Span; for (int ctr = 0; ctr < strValue.Length; ctr++) span[ctr] = strValue[ctr]; } static void DisplayBufferToConsole(Memory<char> buffer) => Console.WriteLine($"Contents of the buffer: '{buffer}'"); }

We can also write this example with the using :

using System; using System.Buffers; class Example { static void Main() { using (IMemoryOwner<char> owner = MemoryPool<char>.Shared.Rent()) { Console.Write("Enter a number: "); try { var value = Int32.Parse(Console.ReadLine()); var memory = owner.Memory; WriteInt32ToBuffer(value, memory); DisplayBufferToConsole(memory.Slice(0, value.ToString().Length)); } catch (FormatException) { Console.WriteLine("You did not enter a valid number."); } catch (OverflowException) { Console.WriteLine($"You entered a number less than {Int32.MinValue:N0} or greater than {Int32.MaxValue:N0}."); } } } static void WriteInt32ToBuffer(int value, Memory<char> buffer) { var strValue = value.ToString(); var span = buffer.Slice(0, strValue.Length).Span; strValue.AsSpan().CopyTo(span); } static void DisplayBufferToConsole(Memory<char> buffer) => Console.WriteLine($"Contents of the buffer: '{buffer}'"); }

In this code:

The Main method holds the reference to the IMemoryOwner<T> instance, so the Main method is the owner of the buffer.

The WriteInt32ToBuffer and DisplayBufferToConsole methods accept Memory<T> as a public API. Therefore, they are consumers of the buffer. And they only consume it one at a time.

Although the WriteInt32ToBuffer method is intended to write a value to the buffer, the DisplayBufferToConsole method isn't. To reflect this, it could have accepted an argument of type ReadOnlyMemory<T>. For more information on ReadOnlyMemory<T>, see Rule #2: Use ReadOnlySpan<T> or ReadOnlyMemory<T> if the buffer should be read-only.

"Ownerless" Memory<T> instances

You can create a Memory<T> instance without using IMemoryOwner<T>. In this case, ownership of the buffer is implicit rather than explicit, and only the single-owner model is supported. You can do this by:

Calling one of the Memory<T> constructors directly, passing in a T[] , as the following example does.

Calling the String.AsMemory extension method to produce a ReadOnlyMemory<char> instance.

using System; class Example { static void Main() { Memory<char> memory = new char[64]; Console.Write("Enter a number: "); var value = Int32.Parse(Console.ReadLine()); WriteInt32ToBuffer(value, memory); DisplayBufferToConsole(memory); } static void WriteInt32ToBuffer(int value, Memory<char> buffer) { var strValue = value.ToString(); strValue.AsSpan().CopyTo(buffer.Slice(0, strValue.Length).Span); } static void DisplayBufferToConsole(Memory<char> buffer) => Console.WriteLine($"Contents of the buffer: '{buffer}'"); }

The method that initially creates the Memory<T> instance is the implicit owner of the buffer. Ownership cannot be transferred to any other component because there is no IMemoryOwner<T> instance to facilitate the transfer. (As an alternative, you can also imagine that the runtime's garbage collector owns the buffer, and all methods just consume the buffer.)

Usage guidelines

Because a memory block is owned but is intended to be passed to multiple components, some of which may operate upon a particular memory block simultaneously, it is important to establish guidelines for using both Memory<T> and Span<T>. Guidelines are necessary because:

It is possible for a component to retain a reference to a memory block after its owner has released it.

It is possible for a component to operate on a buffer at the same time that another component is operating on it, in the process corrupting the data in the buffer.

While the stack-allocated nature of Span<T> optimizes performance and makes Span<T> the preferred type for operating on a memory block, it also subjects Span<T> to some major restrictions. It is important to know when to use a Span<T> and when to use Memory<T>.

The following are our recommendations for successfully using Memory<T> and its related types. Guidance that applies to Memory<T> and Span<T> also applies to ReadOnlyMemory<T> and ReadOnlySpan<T> unless we explicitly note otherwise.

Rule #1: For a synchronous API, use Span<T> instead of Memory<T> as a parameter if possible.

Span<T> is more versatile than Memory<T> and can represent a wider variety of contiguous memory buffers. Span<T> also offers better performance than Memory<T>. Finally, you can use the Memory<T>.Span property to convert a Memory<T> instance to a Span<T>, although Span<T>-to-Memory<T> conversion isn't possible. So if your callers happen to have a Memory<T> instance, they'll be able to call your methods with Span<T> parameters anyway.

Using a parameter of type Span<T> instead of type Memory<T> also helps you write a correct consuming method implementation. You'll automatically get compile-time checks to ensure that you're not attempting to access the buffer beyond your method's lease (more on this later).

Sometimes, you'll have to use a Memory<T> parameter instead of a Span<T> parameter, even if you're fully synchronous. Perhaps an API that you depend accepts only Memory<T> arguments. This is fine, but be aware of the tradeoffs involved when using Memory<T> synchronously.

Rule #2: Use ReadOnlySpan<T> or ReadOnlyMemory<T> if the buffer should be read-only.

In the earlier examples, the DisplayBufferToConsole method only reads from the buffer; it doesn't modify the contents of the buffer. The method signature should be changed to the following.

void DisplayBufferToConsole(ReadOnlyMemory<char> buffer);

In fact, if we combine this rule and Rule #1, we can do even better and rewrite the method signature as follows:

void DisplayBufferToConsole(ReadOnlySpan<char> buffer);

The DisplayBufferToConsole method now works with virtually every buffer type imaginable: T[] , storage allocated with stackalloc, and so on. You can even pass a String directly into it!

Rule #3: If your method accepts Memory<T> and returns void , you must not use the Memory<T> instance after your method returns.

This relates to the "lease" concept mentioned earlier. A void-returning method's lease on the Memory<T> instance begins when the method is entered, and it ends when the method exits. Consider the following example, which calls Log in a loop based on input from the console.

using System; using System.Buffers; public class Example { // implementation provided by third party static extern void Log(ReadOnlyMemory<char> message); // user code public static void Main() { using (var owner = MemoryPool<char>.Shared.Rent()) { var memory = owner.Memory; var span = memory.Span; while (true) { int value = Int32.Parse(Console.ReadLine()); if (value < 0) return; int numCharsWritten = ToBuffer(value, span); Log(memory.Slice(0, numCharsWritten)); } } } private static int ToBuffer(int value, Span<char> span) { string strValue = value.ToString(); int length = strValue.Length; strValue.AsSpan().CopyTo(span.Slice(0, length)); return length; } }

If Log is a fully synchronous method, this code will behave as expected because there is only one active consumer of the memory instance at any given time. But imagine instead that Log has this implementation.

// !!! INCORRECT IMPLEMENTATION !!! static void Log(ReadOnlyMemory<char> message) { // Run in background so that we don't block the main thread while performing IO. Task.Run(() => { StreamWriter sw = File.AppendText(@".\input-numbers.dat"); sw.WriteLine(message); }); }

In this implementation, Log violates its lease because it still attempts to use the Memory<T> instance in the background after the original method has returned. The Main method could mutate the buffer while Log attempts to read from it, which could result in data corruption.

There are several ways to resolve this:

The Log method can return a Task instead of void , as the following implementation of the Log method does. // An acceptable implementation. static Task Log(ReadOnlyMemory<char> message) { // Run in the background so that we don't block the main thread while performing IO. return Task.Run(() => { StreamWriter sw = File.AppendText(@".\input-numbers.dat"); sw.WriteLine(message); sw.Flush(); }); }

Log can instead be implemented as follows: // An acceptable implementation. static void Log(ReadOnlyMemory<char> message) { string defensiveCopy = message.ToString(); // Run in the background so that we don't block the main thread while performing IO. Task.Run(() => { StreamWriter sw = File.AppendText(@".\input-numbers.dat"); sw.WriteLine(defensiveCopy); sw.Flush(); }); }

Rule #4: If your method accepts a Memory<T> and returns a Task, you must not use the Memory<T> instance after the Task transitions to a terminal state.

This is just the async variant of Rule #3. The Log method from the earlier example can be written as follows to comply with this rule:

// An acceptable implementation. static void Log(ReadOnlyMemory<char> message) { // Run in the background so that we don't block the main thread while performing IO. Task.Run(() => { string defensiveCopy = message.ToString(); StreamWriter sw = File.AppendText(@".\input-numbers.dat"); sw.WriteLine(defensiveCopy); sw.Flush(); }); }

Here, "terminal state" means that the task transitions to a completed, faulted, or canceled state. In other words, "terminal state" means "anything that would cause await to throw or to continue execution."

This guidance applies to methods that return Task, Task<TResult>, ValueTask<TResult>, or any similar type.

Rule #5: If your constructor accepts Memory<T> as a parameter, instance methods on the constructed object are assumed to be consumers of the Memory<T> instance.

Consider the following example:

class OddValueExtractor { public OddValueExtractor(ReadOnlyMemory<int> input); public bool TryReadNextOddValue(out int value); } void PrintAllOddValues(ReadOnlyMemory<int> input) { var extractor = new OddValueExtractor(input); while (extractor.TryReadNextOddValue(out int value)) { Console.WriteLine(value); } }

Here, the OddValueExtractor constructor accepts a ReadOnlyMemory<int> as a constructor parameter, so the constructor itself is a consumer of the ReadOnlyMemory<int> instance, and all instance methods on the returned value are also consumers of the original ReadOnlyMemory<int> instance. This means that TryReadNextOddValue consumes the ReadOnlyMemory<int> instance, even though the instance isn't passed directly to the TryReadNextOddValue method.

Rule #6: If you have a settable Memory<T>-typed property (or an equivalent instance method) on your type, instance methods on that object are assumed to be consumers of the Memory<T> instance.

This is really just a variant of Rule #5. This rule exists because property setters or equivalent methods are assumed to capture and persist their inputs, so instance methods on the same object may utilize the captured state.

The following example triggers this rule:

class Person { // Settable property. public Memory<char> FirstName { get; set; } // alternatively, equivalent "setter" method public SetFirstName(Memory<char> value); // alternatively, a public settable field public Memory<char> FirstName; }

Rule #7: If you have an IMemoryOwner<T> reference, you must at some point dispose of it or transfer its ownership (but not both).

Since a Memory<T> instance may be backed by either managed or unmanaged memory, the owner must call MemoryPool<T>.Dispose when work performed on the Memory<T> instance is complete. Alternatively, the owner may transfer ownership of the IMemoryOwner<T> instance to a different component, at which point the acquiring component becomes responsible for calling MemoryPool<T>.Dispose at the appropriate time (more on this later).

Failure to call the Dispose method may lead to unmanaged memory leaks or other performance degradation.

This rule also applies to code that calls factory methods like MemoryPool<T>.Rent. The caller becomes the owner of the returned IMemoryOwner<T> and is responsible for disposing of the instance when finished.

Rule #8: If you have an IMemoryOwner<T> parameter in your API surface, you are accepting ownership of that instance.

Accepting an instance of this type signals that your component intends to take ownership of this instance. Your component becomes responsible for proper disposal according to Rule #7.

Any component that transfers ownership of the IMemoryOwner<T> instance to a different component should no longer use that instance after the method call completes.

Important If your constructor accepts IMemoryOwner<T> as a parameter, its type should implement IDisposable, and your Dispose method should call MemoryPool<T>.Dispose.

Rule #9: If you're wrapping a synchronous p/invoke method, your API should accept Span<T> as a parameter.

According to Rule #1, Span<T> is generally the correct type to use for synchronous APIs. You can pin Span<T> instances via the fixed keyword, as in the following example.

using System.Runtime.InteropServices; [DllImport(...)] private static extern unsafe int ExportedMethod(byte* pbData, int cbData); public unsafe int ManagedWrapper(Span<byte> data) { fixed (byte* pbData = &MemoryMarshal.GetReference(data)) { int retVal = ExportedMethod(pbData, data.Length); /* error checking retVal goes here */ return retVal; } }

In the previous example, pbData can be null if, for example, the input span is empty. If the exported method absolutely requires that pbData be non-null, even if cbData is 0, the method can be implemented as follows:

public unsafe int ManagedWrapper(Span<byte> data) { fixed (byte* pbData = &MemoryMarshal.GetReference(data)) { byte dummy = 0; int retVal = ExportedMethod((pbData != null) ? pbData : &dummy, data.Length); /* error checking retVal goes here */ return retVal; } }

Rule #10: If you're wrapping an asynchronous p/invoke method, your API should accept Memory<T> as a parameter.

Since you cannot use the fixed keyword across asynchronous operations, you use the Memory<T>.Pin method to pin Memory<T> instances, regardless of the kind of contiguous memory the instance represents. The following example shows how to use this API to perform an asynchronous p/invoke call.

using System.Runtime.InteropServices; [UnmanagedFunctionPointer(...)] private delegate void OnCompletedCallback(IntPtr state, int result); [DllImport(...)] private static extern unsafe int ExportedAsyncMethod(byte* pbData, int cbData, IntPtr pState, IntPtr lpfnOnCompletedCallback); private static readonly IntPtr _callbackPtr = GetCompletionCallbackPointer(); public unsafe Task<int> ManagedWrapperAsync(Memory<byte> data) { // setup var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<int>(); var state = new MyCompletedCallbackState { Tcs = tcs }; var pState = (IntPtr)GCHandle.Alloc(state); var memoryHandle = data.Pin(); state.MemoryHandle = memoryHandle; // make the call int result; try { result = ExportedAsyncMethod((byte*)memoryHandle.Pointer, data.Length, pState, _callbackPtr); } catch { ((GCHandle)pState).Free(); // cleanup since callback won't be invoked memoryHandle.Dispose(); throw; } if (result != PENDING) { // Operation completed synchronously; invoke callback manually // for result processing and cleanup. MyCompletedCallbackImplementation(pState, result); } return tcs.Task; } private static void MyCompletedCallbackImplementation(IntPtr state, int result) { GCHandle handle = (GCHandle)state; var actualState = (MyCompletedCallbackState)(handle.Target); handle.Free(); actualState.MemoryHandle.Dispose(); /* error checking result goes here */ if (error) { actualState.Tcs.SetException(...); } else { actualState.Tcs.SetResult(result); } } private static IntPtr GetCompletionCallbackPointer() { OnCompletedCallback callback = MyCompletedCallbackImplementation; GCHandle.Alloc(callback); // keep alive for lifetime of application return Marshal.GetFunctionPointerForDelegate(callback); } private class MyCompletedCallbackState { public TaskCompletionSource<int> Tcs; public MemoryHandle MemoryHandle; }

See also