Posts Tagged memory

C++ For C# Developers: Part 41 – System Integration Library

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A programming language without access to the underlying system is of little use. Even a “Hello, world!” program requires the OS to output that message. Today we’ll start looking at the system access that the Standard Library provides. We’ll see how to access the file system, so-called “smart” pointers, and check the time using various system clocks.

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How Many Temp Allocators Are there?

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Last time we saw that jobs apparently have their own Temp allocator. Still, it was unclear how many of these allocators there are. One per job job? One per thread? Just one? Today we’ll run an experiment to find the answer!

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Temp Memory Reuse

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Temp memory is backed by a fixed size block that’s cleared by Unity every frame. Allocations on subsequent frames return pointers to this same block. The allocated memory therefore isn’t unique. How much of a problem is this? Today we’ll do some experiments to find out!

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Allocating Memory Within a Job: Part 2

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Last week’s article came to the conclusion that allocating Temp memory from within a job was safe. This week we’ll look into that a little deeper to find out that it might not be as safe as it looks!

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Allocating Memory Within a Job

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What do you do when a job you’re writing needs to allocate memory? You could allocate it outside of the job and pass it in, but that presents several problems. You can also allocate memory from within a job. Today we’ll look into how that works and some limitations that come along with it.

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Are Temp Allocations Always Fast?

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We’ve seen that Temp allocations are the fastest kind of allocations, but is this always the case? When the fixed-size block of memory they draw from runs out, are the overflow allocations just as fast? Today we’ll test to find out!

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Deallocating Temp Memory: Part 3

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Continuing the series, today we look specifically at “overflow” allocations in the Temp allocator. We’ve seen that there’s no need to explicitly deallocate Temp memory because it all gets cleared every frame, but do we need to deallocate “overflow” allocations that didn’t fit inside the block of automatically-cleared memory? Today we’ll find out!

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Just How Much Garbage Does LINQ Create?

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LINQ’s CPU performance is quite poor, but how is it with memory? Does every LINQ function always create tons of garbage for the GC to collect, or are there exceptions that aren’t so bad? Today’s article tests out lots of LINQ functions to find out!

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How to Disable the GC

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Unity’s GC is a continual thorn in our sides. We’re constantly working around it by pooling objects, limiting use of language features, and avoiding APIs. We even call GC.Collect on load screens in the hopes that the GC won’t run during gameplay. Today’s article goes one step further and shows how to disable the GC completely so there’s zero chance it’ll run. We’ll also see how to turn it back on when we’re ready for it again.

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C++ Scripting: Part 26 – Hot Reloading

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Imagine being able to modify C++ game code and have it take effect without even restarting the game. That’s the motivating idea behind today’s article. Read on to see how this works and how to use it to really speed up iteration times.

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