Memory Efficiency

Kind: quality-attribute

Layer: Performance Core

Record: architecture:memory-efficiency

Severity: contextual

Scope: algorithm, process, stream

Canonical: Ontology

The degree to which a process handles its input with bounded memory, by streaming or chunking instead of loading it whole.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Rate Limiting and before CDN / Edge Caching.

Requires

• Space Complexity Awareness

Reinforces

• Scalability

Enables

• Large Input Handling

Conflicts with

• Full Materialization

In tension with

• CPU Cost

Tensions

• Memory Efficiency / CPU Cost

Violated by

• Unbounded Memory Growth

Refactored by

• Event Stream
• Chunked Processing
• Iterator Pattern

Severity

• contextual

Category

• Scalability / Performance / Optimization

Reinforced by

• Flyweight Pattern
• Single-Pass Processing
• Lazy Evaluation
• Sequential Access

Linked from

• Structural Patterns
• Scalability / Performance / Optimization
• Streaming / Pipeline / Dataflow Processing
• Core Vocabulary
• Scalability / Performance / Optimization
• Severity levels
• The resolutions