New VM in progress

Tim Rowledge tim at sumeru.stanford.edu
Thu Dec 13 01:04:12 UTC 2001


Scott A Crosby <crosby at qwes.math.cmu.edu> is widely believed to have written:

> What are the new enhancements that a new incompatible release would offer?
> Maybe we should make a full list. Showing people the features of the new
> (incompatible)  VM  might make it easier to get it out of the door.
> 
> * Any other speed patches (other than mine)         Yes? No?
Not sure any particular speed improvements are incompatible-making

> * MethodClosures                                    Yes? No?
I sure hope so. Sounds link anthony has this well in hand

> * Not paying a fullGC on every 'openFile'.          Yes? No? Platform dependent?
Don't think that is vm dependent, nor incompatible-making

> * faster become with forwarding pointers            Yes? No?
Not yet convinced it is really faster. Data would be nice to see on this
one.

> * Instance based prototyping patches                Yes? No?
Hmm. Not a fan of instance based, but Rob Withers and I got a simple
demo hack for something like this working at oopsla this year. Well,
delegation, anyway. Or something. Rob? Stop me before  gibber too
much...


> * Easier (not-incomatible) integration of Jitter?   Yes? No?
Err, not sure I understand. How is jitter incompatible right now? Last
time I checked (ages ago, admittedly) it was a plugin that just took
over if it was there. I'd like to make the 'normal' execution stuff be a
plugin so that it could be dropped if you _do_ have a jitter.

> * More flexible lookup strategies (Mirror, etc)     Yes? No?
See note above about stuff Rob & I did.

> * Switch to VMMAKER (is this the definite future?)
I hope so after all the &$%^ing work it took. Just trying to make the
exception handling play nice almost melted my brain. 
> 
> What have I omitted?
Oh, how about getting the prim number bits de-separated in the method
header, getting rid of a fairly large number of back-compat prim numbers
in favour of the named stuff, removing some of the ITIMER related
stuff... probably more.

tim
-- 
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Strange OpCodes: MW: Multiply Work





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