Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++

bos@serpentine.com (Bryan O'Sullivan)
14 Jun 1996 15:35:18 -0400

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[22 earlier articles]
Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++ pardo@cs.washington.edu (1996-05-24)
Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++ wws@renaissance.cray.com (1996-05-25)
Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++ tmb@best.com (1996-05-26)
Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++ dw3u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Daniel C. Wang) (1996-05-27)
Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++ dave@occl-cam.demon.co.uk (Dave Lloyd) (1996-06-08)
Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++ d.love@daresbury.ac.uk (Dave Love) (1996-06-13)
Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++ bos@serpentine.com (1996-06-14)
Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++ cdg@nullstone.com (1996-06-21)
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From: bos@serpentine.com (Bryan O'Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 14 Jun 1996 15:35:18 -0400
Organization: Polymorphous Thaumaturgy
References: 96-05-061 96-05-163 96-06-016 96-06-048
Keywords: UNCOL, C

Dave Love <d.love@daresbury.ac.uk> writes:


d> Are meaningful comparisons available from compilers which can both
d> generate native code and go via C (GHC and Gambit, perhaps)?


Something may have changed since I worked on GHC, but at least when I
was at Glasgow, GHC didn't really generate native code. What it did
instead was, on particular architectures, coerce GCC into putting
certain global variables used by the runtime system into registers.


This made a tremendous difference to performance on machines that had
plenty of GPRs available, but platforms such as the x86 (and, to a
lesser extent, SPARC) with few GPRs couldn't easily be dealt with in
this way since they tended to run out of registers for use as
temporaries, thereby killing performance.


My understanding is that the Mercury compiler uses a similar scheme to
improve performance; maybe Fergus Henderson can expand on this.


<b


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