The Impact of Meta-Tracing on VM Design and Implementation

TY - JOUR

T1 - The Impact of Meta-Tracing on VM Design and Implementation

AU - Bolz, Carl Friedrich

AU - Tratt, Laurence

PY - 2015/2/1

Y1 - 2015/2/1

N2 - Most modern languages are implemented using Virtual Machines (VMs). While the best VMs use Just-In-Time (JIT) compilers to achieve good performance, JITs are costly to implement, and few VMs therefore come with one. The RPythonlanguage allows tracing JIT VMs to be automatically created from an interpreter, changing the economics of VM implementation. In this paper, we explain, through two concrete VMs, how meta-tracing RPython VMs can be designed and optimised, and, experimentally, the performance levels one might reasonably expect from them.

AB - Most modern languages are implemented using Virtual Machines (VMs). While the best VMs use Just-In-Time (JIT) compilers to achieve good performance, JITs are costly to implement, and few VMs therefore come with one. The RPythonlanguage allows tracing JIT VMs to be automatically created from an interpreter, changing the economics of VM implementation. In this paper, we explain, through two concrete VMs, how meta-tracing RPython VMs can be designed and optimised, and, experimentally, the performance levels one might reasonably expect from them.

U2 - 10.1016/j.scico.2013.02.001

DO - 10.1016/j.scico.2013.02.001

M3 - Article

SN - 0167-6423

VL - 98

SP - 408

EP - 421

JO - SCIENCE OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING

JF - SCIENCE OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING

IS - 3

ER -