When should we use NativeMemory.Alloc() in .NET? [closed]

Question

.NET6/C# introduced NativeMemory class, but I did not get when we should use NativeMemory.Alloc() instead of normal array instantiation(new T[]). My questions are:

1. Which area on memory does NativeMemory.Alloc() populate objects? Does the method populate objects in managed heap?

2. What kind of situation should we use NativeMemory.Alloc() on behalf of new T[]?

Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.runtime.interopservices.nativememory?view=net-6.0

Answer 1

Looks like it's a "thin wrapper over the C malloc API." So if I'm recalling correctly it would allocate memory on the unmanaged heap.

As for the second question, I can't really think of any specific scenarios (save for some edge-cases) where that would be useful (though I'm sure they exist) in .NET where one wouldn't already be using C/C++. That aside though, I suppose one would use this where speed is absolutely paramount (such as rendering).

It's just been added so that we'd have the option to use C/C++ like memory management.