On May 23, 2005, at 9:15 PM, Steve Blackburn wrote:
The wealth of ideas that are coming to the table is impressive.
I suggest that we establish some sort of inventory of our
"assets" (presumably on the wiki). I think that such a resource
will be enormously helpful to a project like this one which is
trying to bring together a huge pool of enthusiasm, prior work and
outstanding research. If this project could produce a VM that
literally combined the best of all of the work at the table, it
would be a formidable VM indeed.
By "assets", I mean everything from the concrete (donated code), to
the more abstract (resources such as papers like the one Andy
posted to the list yesterday). I think that if we maintain this as
we go along, it could prove to be a really valuable resource. To
me this is our strength---so many different individuals bringing
different expertise to the project, from code to ideas. If we can
catalog that wealth and therefore have it at our collective
fingertips, I think the chances of this project capitalizing on
those ideas and doing really exciting things will increase greatly.
I can imagine a tree like structure, with leaves on the tree being
assets, each one described briefly---if code, then the level of
availability and license, and perhaps a summary with pointers to
more info. If a paper, then a short summary and a pointer, etc etc
etc. For example, I think all of the VMs we're aware of should be
leaves of a VM node in the tree. The Boehm collector adn MMTk are
obvious leaves of the VM.GC node. The paper Andy raised could be
added to VM.interpreter. It may in fact be a graph, with, JamVM,
for example getting a mention under VM.interpreter as well as VM
and OVM could be under VM and VM.java-in-java, etc etc etc. In a
relatively short period of time, this could become a great
repository of the state of the art in VM design and implementation.
It may then be that the technical FAQ simply becomes a set of
references to the inventory of ideas.
I thought we were already doing this.
Feel free to reorganize in a way that you see adds value. Whatever
way you set will probably be the way we go forward. :)
geir
--Steve
--
Geir Magnusson Jr +1-203-665-6437
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
