# Objective
Adoption of #2104 and #11843. The `Option<usize>` wastes 3-7 bytes of
memory per potential entry, and represents a scaling memory overhead as
the ID space grows.
The goal of this PR is to reduce memory usage without significantly
impacting common use cases.
Co-Authored By: @NathanSWard
Co-Authored By: @tygyh
## Solution
Replace `usize` in `SparseSet`'s sparse array with
`nonmax::NonMaxUsize`. NonMaxUsize wraps a NonZeroUsize, and applies a
bitwise NOT to the value when accessing it. This allows the compiler to
niche the value and eliminate the extra padding used for the `Option`
inside the sparse array, while moving the niche value from 0 to
usize::MAX instead.
Checking the [diff in x86 generated
assembly](6e4da653cc),
this change actually results in fewer instructions generated. One
potential downside is that it seems to have moved a load before a
branch, which means we may be incurring a cache miss even if the element
is not there.
Note: unlike #2104 and #11843, this PR only targets the metadata stores
for the ECS and not the component storage itself. Due to #9907 targeting
`Entity::generation` instead of `Entity::index`, `ComponentSparseSet`
storing only up to `u32::MAX` elements would become a correctness issue.
This will come with a cost when inserting items into the SparseSet, as
now there is a potential for a panic. These cost are really only
incurred when constructing a new Table, Archetype, or Resource that has
never been seen before by the World. All operations that are fairly cold
and not on any particular hotpath, even for command application.
---
## Changelog
Changed: `SparseSet` now can only store up to `usize::MAX - 1` elements
instead of `usize::MAX`.
Changed: `SparseSet` now uses 33-50% less memory overhead per stored
item.
57733bbec3