Summary: The article discusses the basics of memory allocation, which is a crucial aspect of all computer programs. Programs need to load values from memory, perform computations on them, and store the results back in memory. Allocators are used to effectively use memory. The article explains how simple allocators work and the problems they try to solve. The functions malloc and free are introduced, which are used by almost all programs to manage memory. The article provides a short C program demonstrating their use. The smallest unit of memory that allocators work with is called a byte, which can store any number between 0 and 255. The article represents memory as a grid of squares, with each square representing a byte of memory. The article also explains what malloc returns, which is a pointer or a memory address that identifies a byte in memory. The article provides examples using hexadecimal numbers to represent memory addresses.