On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 09:53:32AM -0400, Stephen Pair wrote:
> 
> Would it also be possible to simply tell the system to compile
> everything?  Thus, eliminating the need to do 'training' runs and
> achieve maximum performance?
> 
No. By "simply compiling eveything" the compiler would have no chance
to get enough information to do good optimizisations. Normal compilers
do exactly that: They try to compile good code for *all* cases.

But a System like strongtalk is able to generate even better code for
the cases that actually happen at runtime: e.g. it collects information
about types ("Hey, that is a Point in 99% of all calls, so let's optimize
the code for that case").

So statically compiling eveything ist no option. But you can of course
ship squeak with a set of ImageSegments containing pre-trained code
for all major architectures.
(Or the system could load this via a Peer-To-Peer System across the net, 
such a thing would be usefull for patches and Modules, too).

        Marcus

-- 
Marcus Denker marcus at ira.uka.de  -- Squeak! http://squeakland.org