2014-07-24 19:37 GMT+02:00 Raoul Duke <raould@gmail.com>:

...

to kick the question up a meta-level: Does anybody have thoughts on
how to best orthogonalize actual memory allocation from where the
application says it wants it? I mean if I write a stupid loop that
makes a zillion particles in the middle of each frame render then yes
I'm an idiot, sure... but what things can be done to actually allow
such idiocy to squeak by?
...

On the game world, they have invented entity-component-system ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system ) data-driven software architecture. The idea is to be very flexible with a "generic kind of object" (entity), with typed component. An entity is only an integer. The component are found inside a collection with the entity identifier.

So each component are allocated in it's own contener, so data are more compact, and memory access appear less random.