[Vm-dev] RSqueakVM (was: primitiveDigitCompare is slow)

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Sat Apr 16 16:55:25 UTC 2016


(changing the subject line)

Thanks very much for this overview of RSqueakVM!

Dave

On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 06:22:03AM -0700, timfelgentreff wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> RSqueakVM is a research Squeak VM written in RPython, with a tracing JIT
> compiler supporting x86 32 and 64bit, armv6, armv7, and powerpc (although we
> have deactivated non-x86-32 builds in the CI right now, because it takes
> forever to run through qemu-chroot and nobody has time to work on these
> platforms right now).
> 
> RSqueak supports all image formats starting with Squeak 2 all the way up to
> current trunk. So you can have a jitted mini image, if you find a filein
> with the Bitblt code in Smalltalk, because we don't have the bitblt plugin
> ;)
> 
> The JIT is fast enough to omit almost all non-essential primitives, and
> simulate many primitives (like Balloon and BitBlt) by running the Slang code
> instead of a plugin. In fact, we don't have large integer, misc, bitblt, or
> balloon plugins, instead relying on the fallback and vmmaker code to make
> execution fast. For many cases this works quite well, although warmup still
> is a big issue for us (the framerate of the image keeps steadily climbing
> for the first few *minutes* that you use it - there is just a lot of stuff
> that needs to be jitted for bitblt, balloon, and fontrendering to get fast).
> 
> We are currently preparing an alpha release as a one-click bundle for people
> to try it out.
> 
> Development is currently here: https://github.com/HPI-SWA-Lab/RSqueak.
> Binaries are built on each commit automatically, but you also need SDL2 and
> a current image with VMMaker (we need a number of fixes in vmmaker and the
> fallback code - so older images need these fixes somehow filed in, too -
> we're also preparing changesets for those)
> 
> 
> philippeback wrote
> > What's RSqueak VM?
> > 
> > Where to find it?
> > 
> > Phil
> > 
> > On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 11:51 AM, Bert Freudenberg <
> 
> > bert@
> 
> > >
> > wrote:
> > 
> >>
> >> On 15.04.2016, at 05:27, David T. Lewis <
> 
> > lewis at .msen
> 
> > > wrote:
> >> >
> >> > 
> > <meta>
> >> > It is really quite remarkable that we could be having this discussion
> >> > at all. An open source virtual machine for Smalltalk that is so fast
> >> that
> >> > is not even worth the trouble to call out to C primitives? Really?!?
> >> Wow.
> >> > 
> > </meta>
> >>
> >> You would get a kick out of taking a closer look at the RSqueak VM. It
> >> doesn???t even use the primitives for BitBlt but runs the Smalltalk code.
> >>
> >> - Bert -
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/primitiveDigitCompare-is-slow-was-Re-squeak-dev-The-Inbox-Kernel-dtl-1015-mcz-tp4890070p4890212.html
> Sent from the Squeak VM mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


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