Re: General byte-codes reference

"Makhno" says...
>Hi, I'm interested in learning a bit more about byte codes in
>general. ie: If one were to write an interpreted language, what sort
>of byte codes to use?


You have to take into account various factors such as CPU speed,
memory speed and cache size. I've been doing a series of experiments
with interpreters hand coded in assembler for some of the latest
processors. It is possible to fit an entire interpreter into the L1
cache (64 KB) of a 1 Ghz AMD but it won't fit into the 16 KB cache of
a Pentium III. The Pentium IV with 12,000 trace cache entries looks
very interesting but I don't have one to play around with.


The choice of byte codes is highly dependent upon the CPU architecture
so I would go with a generalized form in the object modules and let
the loader adapt them to the run time environment.


Call me crazy but I think that the OS kernel may best be interpreted
when CPU speed hits 2GHZ and above.


Norm Culver
ndc@alum.mit.edu
[I run a mailing list about virtual machines where this would also be
germane; send "subscribe gclist" to majordomo@lists.iecc.com to subscribe.
-John]

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