JIT?

Bryce Kampjes bryce at kampjes.demon.co.uk
Fri Dec 17 21:39:36 UTC 2004


Michael Latta writes:
 > Bryce,
 > 
 > What are your plans for the JIT?  Do you plan to release the source to 
 > the community?  Did you plan for supporting other target machines, or 
 > will that need to be folded into the first port?
 > 
 > As soon as you are ready to have someone look at it, I volunteer!!  I 
 > am currently using an Apple G5, and a PowerBook.  So I am interested in 
 > PPC.

In brief, I've released 4 versions so far. The latest is almost
useful. It provides a nice speed up for bytecode performance and is
available on SqueakMap. It only runs on Linux for the x86 and requires
building a custom VM. I'd rather get it working well on one platform
first before adding extra CPUs.

My plans are here:
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3842

It's released under SqueakL/MIT licence. Which should mean no-one
has licencing issues except for religious reasons.

The plans are roughly: 
1) Finish a very simple optimiser. This should provide better bytecode
performance than VW.
2) Write a basic PIC implementation. This will improve send
performance
3) Release 0.05
4) Convince some people to use it. I'll probably need to provide
precompiled VMs. That'll involve learning how to make Debian packages.
5) Either port to the ARM or make it fast enough to be interesting.

Other people have expressed interest in doing a PPC port and a Windows
port. It's really a little early to start a PPC port without wasting a
lot of the porting time. 

I'm interested in ARMs because they're nice for machines that don't
resemble a desktop. I'd really like to see someone do something really
cool with handheld Squeak. 

Bryce



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