Archie Cobbs wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The approach of using C Compiler generated code rather than writing a
full compiler appeals to me:
http://www.csc.uvic.ca/~csc586a/papers/ertlgregg04.pdf
I am curious on how well the approach performs compared to existing
JITs.
I'm admittedly biased, but the approach of using the C compiler has
some good benefits, mainly in portability.
As far as I can tell, the technical insight in this paper has nothing to
do with C per se. It has to do with having a portable ahead of time
compiler (be it C or Java). The idea of leveraging a portable ahead of
time compiler is something that all interpreters do. The insight here
is to do it far more agressively. They automatically build themselves
simple JIT backends (by extracting fragments produced by the ahead of
time compiler). This sounds like a great way to achieve portability
while achiving better performance than a conventional interpreter.
So long as we have a portable java WAT compiler at our disposal (gcj), I
think we can apply this neat idea independant of whether we're using C,
C++ or Java (or fortran for that matter).
--Steve
