Impact of Data-Oriented and Object-Oriented Design on Performance and Cache Utilization with Artificial Intelligence Algorithms in Multi-Threaded CPUs

TL;DR

This paper compares Data-Oriented Design and Object-Oriented Design in multi-threaded CPU environments, showing DOD's advantages in cache efficiency and performance for AI algorithms, despite some overhead in multi-threading.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of DOD versus OOD, demonstrating DOD's superior cache utilization and performance in multi-threaded AI algorithm implementations.

Findings

DOD reduces cache misses and execution time in multi-threaded AI algorithms.

Single-threaded implementations outperform multi-threaded ones due to overhead.

DOD shows consistent advantages in data-intensive operations.

Abstract

The growing performance gap between multi-core CPUs and main memory necessitates hardware-aware software design paradigms. This study provides a comprehensive performance analysis of Data Oriented Design (DOD) versus the traditional Object-Oriented Design (OOD), focusing on cache utilization and efficiency in multi-threaded environments. We developed and compared four distinct versions of the A* search algorithm: single-threaded OOD (ST-OOD), single-threaded DOD (ST-DOD), multi-threaded OOD (MT-OOD), and multi-threaded DOD (MT-DOD). The evaluation was based on metrics including execution time, memory usage, and CPU cache misses. In multi-threaded tests, the DOD implementation demonstrated considerable performance gains, with faster execution times and a lower number of raw system calls and cache misses. While OOD occasionally showed marginal advantages in memory usage or percentage-based cache miss rates, DOD's efficiency in data-intensive operations was more evident. Furthermore, our findings reveal that for a fine-grained task like the A* algorithm, the overhead associated with thread management led to single-threaded versions significantly outperforming their multi-threaded counterparts in both paradigms. We conclude that even when performance differences appear subtle in simple algorithms, the consistent advantages of DOD in critical metrics highlight its foundational architectural superiority, suggesting it is a more effective approach for maximizing hardware efficiency in complex, large-scale AI and parallel computing tasks.