[munksbeer]

So, in option two, you'd be using SoA with a

  double health[];

which is the value that would be updated by healthEntity.updateHealth() ? So because you're sequentially updating only that attribute it should lend itself to being cache friendly and potentially prefetch prediction? (can't remember the term)

[Rayhem]

Yes, exactly. If you have to update everyone's health (you do) and the updates are pretty much the same (they are), then things don't get any more cache friendly than this.