[Vm-dev] Accelerating LargeInteger Plugin

[Nicolas Cellier]

See http://smallissimo.blogspot.fr/2012/12/accelerating-largeinteger-in-squeak.html

This simple experiment is interesting but is not ready to use.
If we change LargeIntegersPlugin to use 32bits words rather than
bytes, we are introducing one more clever hack in the system (two for
handling MSB efficiently).
If we want to make LargeInteger a word array, then we have a transition problem.
I thought of a few more or less evil solutions, but I fail to see how
to not break the smooth trunk update
- perform the operation on a stripped image not requiring LargeIntegers...
- remove the LargeIntegerPlugin, redefine digitAt: digitAt:put: and
digitLength as a hack answering proper byte for both a Byte and
WordArray, then redefine LargePositiveInteger as word Array on such
VM, then add the new plugin...
- use an image tracer

Thoughts?

Nicolas