When Relocations are Performed

All immediate reference relocations must be carried out during process initialization before the application gains control. However, any lazy reference relocations can be deferred until the first instance of a function being called. Immediate relocations typically result from data references. Therefore, reducing the number of data references also reduces the runtime initialization of a process.

Initialization relocation costs can also be deferred by converting data references into function references. For example, you can return data items by a functional interface. This conversion usually results in a perceived performance improvement because the initialization relocation costs are effectively spread throughout the process's execution. Some of the functional interfaces might never be called by a particular invocation of a process, thus removing their relocation overhead altogether.

The advantage of using a functional interface can be seen in the section, "Copy Relocations". This section examines a special, and somewhat expensive, relocation mechanism employed between dynamic executables and shared objects. It also provides an example of how this relocation overhead can be avoided.