Levente Uzonyi wrote:
>> It seems to me that bytecodes cases in the interpret function
>> (in /platform/unix/src/vm/interp.c) are not ordered in respect to
>> the probability of their execution.
> 
> Since the switch-case statement in C is compiled into a jump table 
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_table) the order of the branches 
> shouldn't affect the speed of execution (you can even start with the 
> default branch).

In theory. In practice, the effect of branch-mispredictions can be quite 
noticable:

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2003-July/061996.html

Cheers,
   - Andreas