computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, data-oriented design is a

program optimization In computer science, program optimization, code optimization, or software optimization is the process of modifying a software system to make some aspect of it work more efficiently or use fewer resources. In general, a computer program may be op ...

approach motivated by efficient usage of the

CPU cache A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, whi ...

, often used in

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

development. The approach is to focus on the data layout, separating and sorting

fields Fields may refer to: Music *Fields (band), an indie rock band formed in 2006 * Fields (progressive rock band), a progressive rock band formed in 1971 * ''Fields'' (album), an LP by Swedish-based indie rock band Junip (2010) * "Fields", a song by ...

according to when they are needed, and to think about transformations of data. Proponents include Mike Acton,

Scott Meyers Scott Douglas Meyers (born April 9, 1959) is an American author and software consultant, specializing in the C++ computer programming language. He is known for his ''Effective C++'' book series. During his career, he was a frequent speaker at co ...

, and

Jonathan Blow Jonathan Blow (born 1971) is an American video game designer and programmer. He is best known for his work on the independent video games ''Braid'' (2008) and '' The Witness'' (2016). Blow became interested in game programming while at middle ...

. The

parallel array In computing, a group of parallel arrays (also known as structure of arrays or SoA) is a form of implicit data structure that uses multiple arrays to represent a singular array of records. It keeps a separate, homogeneous data array for each fi ...

(or structure of arrays) is the main example of data-oriented design. It is contrasted with the ''array of structures'' typical of object-oriented designs. The definition of data-oriented design as a

programming paradigm A programming paradigm is a relatively high-level way to conceptualize and structure the implementation of a computer program. A programming language can be classified as supporting one or more paradigms. Paradigms are separated along and descri ...

can be seen as contentious as many believe that it can be used side by side with another paradigm, but due to the emphasis on data layout, it is also incompatible with most other paradigms.

Motives

These methods became especially popular in the mid to late 2000s during the

seventh generation of video game consoles The seventh generation of home video game consoles began on November 22, 2005, with the release of Microsoft's Xbox 360 home console. This was followed by the release of Sony's PlayStation 3 on November 17, 2006, and Nintendo's Wii on November ...

that included the

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

based

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...

(PS3) and

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the Xbox (console), original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detail ...

consoles. Historically,

game console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location conne ...

s often have relatively weak

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...

s (CPUs) compared to the top-of-line desktop computer counterparts. This is a design choice to devote more power and transistor budget to the

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

s (GPUs). For example, the 7th generation CPUs were not manufactured with modern

out-of-order execution In computer engineering, out-of-order execution (or more formally dynamic execution) is an instruction scheduling paradigm used in high-performance central processing units to make use of instruction cycles that would otherwise be wasted. In t ...

processors, but instead use in-order processors with high clock speeds and deep

pipelines A pipeline is a system of pipes for long-distance transportation of a liquid or gas, typically to a market area for consumption. The latest data from 2014 gives a total of slightly less than of pipeline in 120 countries around the world. The Un ...

. In addition, most types of computing systems have

main memory Computer data storage or digital data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central processin ...

located hundreds of

clock cycle In electronics and especially synchronous digital circuits, a clock signal (historically also known as ''logic beat'') is an electronic logic signal (voltage or current) which oscillates between a high and a low state at a constant frequency and ...

s away from the

processing element This glossary of computer hardware terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to computer hardware, i.e. the physical and structural components of computers, architectural issues, and peripheral devices. A ...

s. Furthermore, as CPUs have become faster alongside a large increase in main memory capacity, there is massive data consumption that increases the likelihood of cache misses in the shared bus, otherwise known as Von Neumann bottlenecking. Consequently,

locality of reference In computer science, locality of reference, also known as the principle of locality, is the tendency of a processor to access the same set of memory locations repetitively over a short period of time. There are two basic types of reference localit ...

methods have been used to control performance, requiring improvement of

memory access pattern In computing, a memory access pattern or IO access pattern is the pattern with which a system or program reads and writes memory on secondary storage. These patterns differ in the level of locality of reference and drastically affect cache perform ...

s to fix bottlenecking. Some of the software issues were also similar to those encountered on the

Itanium Itanium (; ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit computing, 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). The Itanium architecture originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was later jointly dev ...

, requiring

loop unrolling Loop unrolling, also known as loop unwinding, is a loop transformation technique that attempts to optimize a program's execution speed at the expense of its binary size, which is an approach known as space–time tradeoff. The transformation c ...

for upfront scheduling.

Contrast with object orientation

The claim is that traditional

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impl ...

(OOP) design principles result in poor data locality, more so if runtime polymorphism (

dynamic dispatch In computer science, dynamic dispatch is the process of selecting which implementation of a polymorphic operation (method or function) to call at run time. It is commonly employed in, and considered a prime characteristic of, object-oriented ...

) is used (which is especially problematic on some processors).describes the problems with virtual function calls, e.g., i-cache misses Although OOP appears to "organise code around data", it actually organises

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

around

data type In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a collection or grouping of data values, usually specified by a set of possible values, a set of allowed operations on these values, and/or a representation of these ...

s rather than physically grouping individual fields and arrays in an efficient format for access by specific functions. Moreover, it often hides layout details under

abstraction layer In computing, an abstraction layer or abstraction level is a way of hiding the working details of a subsystem. Examples of software models that use layers of abstraction include the OSI model for network protocols, OpenGL, and other graphics libra ...

s, while a data-oriented programmer wants to consider this first and foremost.

References

{{Reflist Software optimization Video game development Programming paradigms

Motives

Contrast with object orientation

See also

References