method dictionary lookups and walking up the inheritance tree

tim Rowledge tim at rowledge.org
Tue May 16 19:31:58 UTC 2006


On 16-May-06, at 12:05 PM, John M McIntosh wrote:

> I'll note the cache is very efficient, someone a few years back  
> attempted to make some changes and make the cache much much bigger
> In testing on various platforms we could not show any improvement  
> in the standard benchmarks  to justify the additional memory  
> requirements.
I think it was worse - on several machines of plausible spec it  
actually got slower.

VisualWorks (and probably other VMs at a guess) got some serious  
benefits out of polymorphic inline caches. I rather doubt inline  
caching is going to work in an interpreter but there might be some  
advantage in making the current global cache polymorphic. It could be  
a decent experiment to try out as a class exercise for example, since  
even if it turns out not to be beneficial it would be instructive and  
require all the usual investigative, analytical and explicative  
skills. I'd even volunteer to help with reviewing and grading,  
subject to time constraints.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
World Ends at Ten! Pictures at 11 on Fox News!





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