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Data-Oriented Design Fundamentals

This document outlines the core principles and guidelines for contributing to our project, which has been rewritten using a data-oriented design (DoD) approach.

Why Data-Oriented Design?

The source code is now written in a data-oriented style instead of an object-oriented one. This change was made because traditional OOP can be CPU cache-unfriendly, leading to slower performance compared to DoD principles.

While Yuzu's entire codebase is object-oriented, we believe that applying DoD from the very beginning could significantly improve its speed and efficiency.

Key Resources

To learn more about data-oriented design fundamentals, please refer to this invaluable resource:

https://github.com/dbartolini/data-oriented-design

This guide should be treated as a fundamental reference when working on our codebase.

Core Principles

1. Performance First

Performance is the top priority in all aspects of development. Always ask yourself: "Is the CPU wasting cycles running this code? If so, how do I fix it?" The data-oriented design resource above contains answers to these questions.

2. Memory Management

  • Heap Allocation Ban: Using memory allocation functions like malloc(), free(), new, and delete is prohibited.
  • Stack Preference: Keep everything on the stack whenever possible.
  • Last Resort: If you must allocate memory, use our custom memory allocator in core/memory/arena.h. This should be your last resort only.

The reason for these strict rules is that heap allocations can introduce undefined behavior issues into our codebase.

3. Safety First

  1. Error Handling: Every return code from a function must be checked and handled appropriately.
  2. Assertions: Use assertions to guarantee behavior whenever possible. Watch this video for an explanation: https://youtube.com/shorts/M-VU0fLjIUU
  3. Static Analysis: Use the SonarQube static analyzer to catch potential bugs early in development.

4. Documentation

Document every struct and function throughout our codebase. This is a tedious task, but it will be greatly appreciated by current and future programmers working on this project.

Style Conventions

Refer to main.cpp and the GUI folder for examples of proper code styling. Here are some specific rules:

  1. Constant First in Equality Tests: 
    // Non-compliant
if (var == constant)
if (pointer == NULL)

// Compliant
if (constant == var)
if (NULL == pointer)
  2. Todo Comments: Use the following format: 
    // Todo(<Username>:<section>): ...

Where <section> is one of:

- cpu
- gpu
- gui
- memory
- filesystem

 For example:
 // Todo(GloriousTaco:memory): Create a custom allocator.

Contributing Suggestions

For those who want to contribute now, we suggest rewriting:

  • Base::Log::Initialize()
  • Base::Log::Start()
  • Config::load()

in main() using the principles outlined in this document.

If you're familiar with memory allocators, please consider implementing std::allocator for our custom memory allocator in core/memory/arena.h. This would allow us to manage the memory of C++ standard types like std::vector.