In
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 ...
, interleaving of data refers to the interspersing of
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 ...
or channels of different meaning sequentially in
memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...
, in
processor registers
A processor register is a quickly accessible location available to a computer's processor. Registers usually consist of a small amount of fast storage, although some registers have specific hardware functions, and may be read-only or write-onl ...
, or in
file format
A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...
s. For example, for
coordinate
In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine and standardize the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The coordinates are ...
data,
:
x0 y0 z0 w0 x1 y1 z1 w1 x2 y2 z2 w2
:
x0 x1 x2 x3 y0 y1 y2 y3 z0 z1 z2 z3 w0 w1 w2 w3
the former is interleaved while the latter is not.
A processor may support
permute instructions, or strided
load and store instructions, for moving between interleaved and non-interleaved representations.
Interleaving has performance implications for
cache coherency
In computer architecture, cache coherence is the uniformity of shared resource data that is stored in multiple local caches. In a cache coherent system, if multiple clients have a cached copy of the same region of a shared memory resource, all ...
, ease of leveraging
SIMD
Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) is a type of parallel computer, parallel processing in Flynn's taxonomy. SIMD describes computers with multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data points simultaneousl ...
hardware, and leveraging a computer's
addressing mode
Addressing modes are an aspect of the instruction set architecture in most central processing unit (CPU) designs. The various addressing modes that are defined in a given instruction set architecture define how the machine language instructions ...
s. (e.g. - interleaved data may require one address to be calculated, from which individual fields may then be accessed via
immediate offsets; conversely if only one field is required by index, de-interleaved data may leverage
scaled index addressing).
See also
*
AOS vs SOA
*
Data-oriented design
*
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 ...
*
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 ...
s
*
Planar image format
*
Packed pixel format
References
Computer memory
Computer data storage
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