From: Peter Suk <peter.kwangjun.suk@...>
Date: 2005-04-08T19:09:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Seven new VMs, all in a row

On Apr 8, 2005, at 4:41 AM, flaig@sanctacaris.net wrote:

> Yeah, I'm curious about that too... a couple of years ago I wrote a 
> Python-2-native compiler but was very disappointed to find that it 
> revved up things only 2x to 3x (to less than 1/10 the speed of C 
> code), the matter obviously being that Python's way of object handling 
> already consumed most of the CPU time.

Reference counting GC, isn't it?  That automatically raises your 
assignment overhead 2X.

>  Obviously, the need for endless type checks, comparisons and 
> conversions, not to mention memory allocation and deallocation, is a 
> bottleneck, at least in Python -- and though I am not really familiar 
> with the internals of the Ruby interpreter, I think that the problem 
> will be pretty much the same. Also in Smalltalk.

Generational GC.  (So you're not at the mercy of the system's malloc & 
free)  JIT.  Implementing message sends as direct jumps for monomorphic 
methods.  (& polymorphic methods with a caching strategy.)  Call chain 
optimization.  Those are the ones I know about.  Not all Smalltalks use 
them.

> So there must really be some fundamental stroke of genius involved....
> And if so, what about incorporating this into Ruby 2.x one day? :-)

As far as I am concerned, this project is a rehearsal for the 
appearance of Ruby 2.x.

--Peter


--
There's neither heaven nor hell, save what we grant ourselves.
There's neither fairness nor justice, save what we grant each other.