may include blocks having a minimum size of 1 k and a maximum size less than 3 k e g 3 k u2212 1 when an application 74 requests a block of memory the chunk manager 70 modifies the request to instead look for a block with the next highest size standard memory block for example if an application requests 2 5 k bytes of memory the chunk manager 70 will look for a 3 k standard block of memory i e 3 k to 7 k u2212 1 to allocate to the application fragmentation is reduced by setting aside standard size blocks of memory for applications it is to be understood that the system may create standard block size lists different than described above for example the system may create standard block sizes of 1 k 2 5 k 10 k 16 k 32 k and 64 k in order to further reduce memory fragmentation when the chunk manager 70 searches for free blocks of memory to allocate to the application it will allocate the first free block it encounters having a block size within a predefined range e g 50 to 200 of the requested memory block size the percentage difference in the new block size when compared to the requested size can be controlled by having more granular memory pool sizes in the.