iOS Memory Deep Dive for Unity Developers

0x00 Description

There are often a lot of people wondering why the memory data provided by Unity’s profiler is different from the memory data provided by some native profilers, such as Xcode for iOS. And people are interested in how to analyze the data from these native tools, such as Xcode for iOS. I watched the session Developing and optimizing a procedural game | The Elder Scrolls Blades — Unite Copenhagen recently. The session covered some topics related to iOS memory and Unity. And there is an amazing session last year from WWDC2018, you can find some useful links at the end of the article. However, as for our Unity developers, what should we do to solve iOS memory related problems?

Next, I will discuss how a Unity developer can handle iOS memory related issues at work. The main content includes analyzing the memory management of the iOS system, using the Instrument to view the memory status of a Unity game, and using the command line tools to dig deep into the memory problems in a Unity game.

0x01 iOS memory management — Is Unity Profiler wrong?

First of all, I want to emphasize that the memory data provided by a profiler tool is only a (set) number, and different tools have different strategies to analyze memory. Therefore, an important…