Value Types in the CLR
summary
CLR value types are always flattened and can live on stack, heap or as fields with managed pointers that allow ref parameters and interior access; boxing creates heap objects and unboxing adjusts the this pointer. Reified generics produce separate statics and type objects and reified generics specialize on value types so JIT emits specialized code, enabling things like Span<T>, value tuples and a monoid pattern that yields native-strength math. Runtime cost includes ~240 special cases, 20–30 ABI variants and reported 1000× allocation reductions in real scenarios.
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chapters (19)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:15Outline
- 0:59Terminology
- 3:47Design Goals
- 7:43Value Types
- 8:11What are value types
- 9:15Why do we support value types
- 10:59Primitive types
- 13:11GC heap allocation
- 14:01Why use value types
- 15:29What is a boxed value type
- 17:05What is a managed pointer
- 19:10Runtime challenges
- 22:59Generics
- 24:44Reified Generics
- 26:32Type Classes
- 33:44Specialization
- 39:33Constraint
- 42:06Challenges
