Malloc

Memory Allocator

Combination of Linux default memory allocator malloc with Python's default memory allocator is pessimistic when it comes to system memory garbage collection and it will sometimes hold on to allocated memory longer than necessary even if GC is triggered explicitly.
This appears to user as a memory leak as process memory usage grows over time.
This is especially noticeable when frequently loading/unloading large objects such as models or LoRAs.

Tip

For Linux deployments you can switch out memory allocator to tcmalloc or jemalloc
which are more efficient and have better memory management.

Note

This applies to system memory only and has no impact on GPU memory management

tcmalloc

sudo apt install google-perftools  
sudo ldconfig  
export LD_PRELOAD=libtcmalloc.so.4  
./webui.sh --debug  

jemalloc

sudo apt install libjemalloc2
sudo ldconfig  
export LD_PRELOAD=libjemalloc.so.2  
./webui.sh --debug