Game engines process a lot of data under strict deadlines. Therefore, measures to increase performance are important in this area. Data-Oriented Design (DOD) promotes principles that are meant to increase performance by better cache utilization. The purpose of this thesis is to examine a selection of these principles to give a better understanding of how DOD affects CPU time and the rate of cache misses, with focus on the area of game development. More specifically, the principles examined are removal of run-time polymorphism, iteration over contiguous data, and lowering the amount of data in hot loops. Also, the Entity-Component-System pattern is examined, which is based upon DOD principles. The approach was to first present a theoretical background on the subject, and then to conduct tests by implementing a simulation of movement and collision detection utilizing said principles. The tests were written in C++ and executed on an Intel Core i7 4770k with no rendering. CPU time was measured in updated entities per μs, and cache utilization was measured in the form of cache miss rate. The results showed that the DOD principles did increase performance. Cache miss rate was also lower, with the exception of when removing run-time polymorphism. The conclusion is that Data-Oriented Design, used in game development, is likely to result in better performance, mostly as a result of better cache utilization.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-185247 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Nyberg, Frank |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för datavetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | UMNAD ; 1292 |
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