Experience in developing the urbanSim system: tools and processes
OOPSLA '03 Companion of the 18th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications
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In the Java object-oriented programming language, a certain amount of memory overhead beyond an object's fields is required for each object instance. In simulations or other applications with millions of individual object instances, the per-object overhead can be substantial. This dissertation introduces the optimization technique of object exploding, in which fields of large numbers of objects are represented in parallel arrays. The problem space from which specific object exploding approaches are drawn is defined, and the “Restriction Approach” is described in detail. It is hypothesized that the restriction approach to object exploding can result in a factor-of-two improvement in application performance and a corresponding decrease in memory requirements. A prototype implementation is described, along with experimental results indicating that the restriction approach to object exploding can result in a factor-of-two or greater increase in application performance as well as a significant reduction in memory requirements.