This disclosure is directed to a technique for memory management where physical memory areas may be partitions into a hierarchy of portions, the hierarchy may include a domain level that includes a page level that includes a slice level that includes an object level. Objects within a slice are a consistent size but may be different sized for different slices. A set of states reflecting memory usage status for each of the slices includes: a clean state for unused; a partial state; a full state; and a dirty state. Responses to allocation requests may be performed by selecting objects that are in a most preferred state based on a state allocation cost and a memory allocation cost either alone or in combination. A compact memory layout may be used to reduce run-time fragmentation of memory.