Re: virtual machine efficiency

ed_davis2 <ed_davis2@yahoo.com> wrote:


> [push address] takes one byte, and the address takes 4 bytes.
> If I pack the code into a byte array, this takes 5 bytes. However,
> now that means that address isn't on a word boundary. If I load
> 'address' using:
>
> unsigned char *code;
>
> operand = *(int *)code;
>
> I incur a speed hit on many processors, and it may even fail on
> others, since code probably isn't suitably aligned.


As a first step I would measure how much of a speed penalty you
actually incur by having to extract the adress data from out of the
bytecode (and yes, you will have to extract it for proper alignment).


Especially if your compiler recognizes memcpy() and compiles it into
optimized code, you might find that for example crossing the line
boundaries in your processor's L1 cache has greater impact than the
lack of alignment of single operands.


--
Lars Duening; lars@bearnip dot com

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