title: How does a memory leak improve performance
body: <p>I'm building a large RTree (spatial index) full of nodes.  It needs to be able to handle many queries AND updates.  Objects are continuously being created and destroyed.  The basic test I'm running is to see the performance of the tree as the number of objects in the tree increases.  I insert from 100-20000 uniformly size, randomly located objects in increments of 100.  Searching and updating are irrelevant to the issue I am currently faced with.</p>
  
  <p>Now, when there is <strong>NO</strong> memory leak the "insert into tree" performance is everywhere.  It goes anywhere from 10.5 seconds with ~15000 objects to 1.5 with ~18000.  There is no pattern whatsoever.</p>
  
  <p>When I deliberately add in a leak, as simple as putting in "new int;" I don't assign it to anything, that right there is a line to itself, the performance instantly falls onto a nice gentle curve sloping from 0 (roughly) seconds for 100 objects to 1.5 for the full 20k.</p>
  
  <p>Very, very lost at this point.  If you want source code I can include it but it's huuugggeeee and literally the only line that makes a difference is "new int;" </p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance!
  -nick</p>