This is the mail archive of the
guile@sourceware.cygnus.com
mailing list for the Guile project.
Re: bytecode interpreter + dynamic compilation
- To: Doug Evans <dje at transmeta dot com>
- Subject: Re: bytecode interpreter + dynamic compilation
- From: Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>
- Date: 05 Dec 1999 11:27:19 -0800
- Cc: guile at sourceware dot cygnus dot com
- References: <199912051834.KAA19461@casey.transmeta.com>
Doug Evans <dje@transmeta.com> writes:
> Here's a wild half-baked thought.
>
> Suppose Guile used a bytecode interpreter and used dynamic compilation
> for speed when needed? A dynamic compiler for Scheme doesn't appear
> to require any rocket science, and I think the speed up would be substantial.
Great idea. Not very wild though ...
> No claim is made that this is a new idea. It's old (if not ancient).
Yep. It's exactly what Kawa does when running on JVM containing a JIT.
(Acronym expansion: "JVM" is "Java Virtual Machine" or Java interpreter.
JIT is "Just-In-Time compiler" - i.e. dynamic compilation. The fastest
JVMs use dynamic compilation for speeding up frequently used methods.
Kaffe, which is available under a GPL license, compiles all methods
to native code.)
--
--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com http://www.bothner.com/~per/