Re: Efficient bytecode generation?

Eliot Miranda <eliotm@pacbell.net>
5 Apr 2003 15:04:12 -0500

          From comp.compilers

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Re: Efficient bytecode generation? strohm@airmail.net (John R. Strohm) (2003-03-30)
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| List of all articles for this month |
From: Eliot Miranda <eliotm@pacbell.net>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 5 Apr 2003 15:04:12 -0500
Organization: Prodigy Internet http://www.prodigy.com
References: 03-03-096 03-03-169 03-03-192
Keywords: code, interpreter
Posted-Date: 05 Apr 2003 15:04:12 EST

Hi John,


> [There was a lengthy thread in comp.compilers some years ago on
> tricking your C compiler into doing threaded code dispatches, which
> worked, but I still think the register save and restore overhead
> around the JSR is a significant performance issue for simple
> bytecodes unless you're going to write it all in assembler and use
> register conventions that let you save nothing. -John]


I was one of the C compiler abusers who did this. My approach was to
use editor scripts on the C compiler's assembler output. These
scripts would essentially delete the prologue and epilog, removing any
callee-saved register saves. So one can still achieve a convention
that requires no saves and stay in C. In fact, by abstracting things
like the threaded-code jump-to-next instruction into macros one could
compile a VM using a vanilla C compiler and no editor scripts and have
it run (faster than a bytecoded interpreter) or compile to assembler
and edit into a direct threaded code machine with no overhead above
the indirect jump.


illustrations on request...
--
_______________,,,^..^,,,____________________________
Eliot Miranda Smalltalk - Scene not herd



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