====== Leaving Unused Fields in DMA Structures Uninitialized ======


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==== What is it: ====

Leaving DMA pointers as garbage or nonsense.

The most common occurrence of this phenomenon is leaving the ''%%ccb_NextPtr%%'' field uninitialized. Future versions of the cel engine hardware may attempt to do pre-fetches to increase rendering speed; an uninitialized pointer pointing out of memory space could cause your process to terminate unexpectedly.

==== Why it's bad: ====

Hardware prefetch logic could cause your program to terminate.

==== What to do ====

Always initialize your structures. Always set DMA pointers to valid memory or to NULL**.**