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

, 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 o ...

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, which ...

, used in

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

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 con ...

, 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). Born in California, Blow developed a passion for game progra ...

. 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 field ...

(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.

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 Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 3 on November 17, 2006, and Nint ...

that included the IBM

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 by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...

(PS3) and

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

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 be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a t ...

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 electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

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 to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

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 a paradigm used in most high-performance central processing units to make use of instruction cycles that would otherwise be wasted. In this paradigm, a proce ...

processors, but instead use

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

s with high clock speeds and deep pipelines. In addition, most types of computing systems have

main memory Computer 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 processing unit (CPU) of a computer ...

located hundreds of

clock cycle In electronics and especially synchronous digital circuits, a clock signal (historically also known as ''logic beat'') oscillates between a high and a low state and is used like a metronome to coordinate actions of digital circuits. A clock sign ...

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 computing, a cache ( ) is a hardware or software component that stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsewher ...

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 performa ...

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 Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance computin ...

, 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 ca ...

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", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of pr ...

(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). Although OOP appears to "organise code around data", it actually organises

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

around

data type In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a set of possible values and a set of allowed operations on it. A data type tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data. Most progra ...

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

Motives

Contrast with object orientation

See also

References