I was trying to look at the behavior of the new allocator and why it doesn't place data contiguously. My code: struct ci { char c; int i; } template <typename T> void memTest() { T * pLast = new T(); for(int i = 0; i < 20; ++i) { T * pNew = new T(); cout << (pNew - pLast) << " "; pLast = pNew; } } So I ran this with char, int, ci. Most allocations were a fixed length from the last, sometimes there were odd jumps from one available block to another. sizeof(char) : 1 Average Jump: 64 bytes sizeof(int): 4 Average Jump: 16 sizeof(ci): 8 (int has to be placed on a 4 byte align) Average Jump: 9 Can anyone explain why the allocator is fragmenting memory like this? Also why is the jump for char so much larger then ints and a structure that contains both an int and char.