Memory profiling

["Alex R. Mosteo" <devnull@mailinator.com>]

Hello,

I'm wondering if there exists some utility -maybe gdb based- that would 
allow to run a program and at a given time interrupt it and dump the 
heap usage classified by the pointer types. For example:

Heap allocation for process <blah>:

    Type_X_Access: 24.5 MB
    Type_Y_Access: 225.3 KB
    ...

I bet this could be very useful for memory usage profiling and 
optimization. I've just seen Massif from the Valgrind toolsuite and I'm 
going to read more about it. If someone can confirm this is in the right 
path...

I suppose something similar can be achieved using distinct storage pools 
for each access type being tracked, but I find this more inconvenient. 
Ummm, maybe a type holding a list of storage pools created on demand...

So, any suggestions in this direction?