memory usage of byte[] ?

[Ulf Zibis]

This is an interesting detail.

Do you know, which systems aren't able to access bytes atomically, and 
which are?
Intel, AMD, ...

-Ulf


Am 06.07.2008 03:35, David Holmes - Sun Microsystems schrieb:
> Ulf,
>
> Peter B. Kessler said the following on 07/06/08 06:26:
>> Every object in the HotSpot JVM has a 2-word header, where the
>> word size is 32-bits in the 32-bit JVM and 64-bits in the 64-bit
>> JVM (duh).  An array then has a word that holds the length of
>> the array.  Following that comes the data, in whatever size is
>> appropriate: boolean and byte elements take 1 byte each, chars
>> and shorts take 2 bytes, ints and floats take 4 bytes, and longs
>> and doubles take 8 bytes.  References to other objects take either
>> 4 or 8 bytes depending on whether you are in a 32-bit JVM or a
>> 64-bit one (with a twist with compressed oops). 
>
> Might I also point out, however, that the layout of arrays must 
> prevent word-tearing (JLS 3, Section 17.6). So if byte array elements 
> are actually bytes, then the implementation must be able to access 
> them atomically as bytes. On systems that don't support atomic access 
> to sub-word elements, all array elements would have to be word-sized.
>
> David Holmes
>
>
>