It depends on how many times removed it is. Lets say it's 4 8bit ints. It can be sequentially and directly in memory like: stack: [0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x03]

It depends on how many times removed it is. Lets say it's 4 8bit ints. It can be sequentially and directly in memory like: stack: [0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x03] Each int is directly next to each other in memory. But it could instead be pointers to the ints, like: stack: [0x07002412, 0x0700241A, 0x07002424, 0x070036A0] heap (or stack, really): 0x07002412: 0x01 0x0700241A: 0x02 0x07002424: 0x03 0x070036A0: 0x04 The CPU needs to dereference that pointer, and the cache is getting all screwed up. That is what "void*" is doing. You're using a pointer instead of a value. In C# this is what generics allow you to avoid. // This is like my first memory layout above. struct Foo<T> { public T MyField; } vs: // This is like the second layout above. struct Foo { public object MyField; }