That is wonderfully clear. I haven't touched much Java post nio but could the app just use something like java.nio.ByteBuffer to model the raw memory at the bottom of the graph, then have EarlyStageFrames muck with those using static native methods that take the ByteBuffers where needed and then LaterStageFrames playing with the EarlyStageFrames and reaching inside them to get at their ByteBuffers when absolutely needed for performance?

> It's probably best modeled as an acyclic directed graph

My pet theory is that a good representation for most systems should maybe always be an acyclic directed graph?