Patent ID: 8843944

Claim:
A method of determining a class of an object, comprising: obtaining a pointer of the object, where the pointer points to the object; extracting from the pointer one or more class identifier bits, wherein the one or more class identifier bits comprise a class identifier used to identify the class of the object, and wherein the extracting includes using a mask, using a bit wise operation, or using a shifting operation; interpreting the one or more class identifier bits as an identifier of the class of the object, wherein interpreting the one or more class identifier bits as an identifier of the class of the object includes performing processing required to use the one or more class identifier bits as an identifier associated with the pointer, and wherein the processing includes loading the one or more class identifier bits into an immediate field of a processor instruction or loading the one or more class identifier bits into a register; and determining the class of the object based at least in part on the class identifier bits extracted from the pointer to the object, wherein determining the class of the object does not require loading the object.