Ron Welch wrote:
> 
> The source code is available at: http://code.google.com/p/v8/
> 

I'm looking at it now ;-) Talk about a game-changer...

Cheers,
   - Andreas

> 
> On 9/2/08 3:23 PM, "John M McIntosh" <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 
> wrote:
> 
>     ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>     From: Dave Griswold <David.Griswold.256 at gmail.com>
>     Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2008 12:14:32 -0700 (PDT)
>     Subject: Chrome and V8
>     To: Strongtalk-general <strongtalk-general at googlegroups.com>
> 
> 
>     Hi everyone,
> 
>     It's been a while, but now that Google has announced Chrome and V8, I
>     can finally make a little clearer a major reason why I haven't been
>     pushing Strongtalk development for quite a while: Chrome's new
>     JavaScript engine V8.
> 
>     The V8 development team has multiple members of the original
>     Animorphic team; it is headed by Lars Bak, who was the technical lead
>     for both Strongtalk and the HotSpot Java VM (as well as a huge
>     contributor to the original Self VM).   I think that you will find
>     that V8 has a lot of the creamy goodness of the Strongtalk and Self
>     VMs, with many big architectural improvements:
> 
>     * open source
>     * will run (eventually) on Windows, Linux, and Mac
>     * dynamically JITs to native code
>     * can run completely independently from the browser
>     * generates hidden classes behind the scenes, since javascript doesn't
>     have them (very reminiscent of the 'maps' used in the Self VM).
>     * is multi-threaded from the ground up, with the ability to share VM
>     overhead between different OS processes.
>     * has even smaller object headers than in Strongtalk, making small
>     object overhead even smaller
>     * kick-ass compacting, non-conservative garbage collector
> 
>     The really big deal here is the fundamentally multi-threaded, multi-
>     process nature of the VM.  That is something that we don't really have
>     the ability to just hack into the Strongtalk VM; it would involve
>     practically an entire rewrite.  Plus, expect a lot of architectural
>     improvements in the source code based on experience with Self,
>     Strongtalk and Java Hotspot VMs.
> 
>     I think these properties will rapidly make V8 the dominant VM for
>     dynamic languages.  It ought to make a great platform for Smalltalk.
> 
>     Since I am not a Googler, and they are so secretive, I am not yet
>     privy to all the gory details, but I suspect that it probably won't
>     use type-feedback like Strongtalk, which would be the one big negative
>     (and would mean that it wouldn't be as fast as Strongtalk).  However I
>     don't know that for sure, and in any case it will be open source,
>     which means that it might be a nice platform to add type-feedback-
>     based inlining to if they don't do it.  At any rate, it *does* JIT to
>     native code, so it will be far faster than Squeak, and probably a lot
>     faster than Visualworks as well.
> 
>     We'll have to see what the details are when the code comes out, but
>     the release of the V8 VM is the beginning of a whole new era for
>     dynamic languages (Smalltalk, Ruby, Python, etc).
> 
>     Let the flood of fast new dynamic language implementations begin!
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> 
> 
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