On Sat, Dec 23, 2000 at 04:24:37PM -0500, Kevin Lawton wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > Unless I'm missing something, the above scheme could permit large
> > portions of the code to be translated and then run natively.
>
> A page fault invokes the same mechanisms and overhead as
> other events like from INT3, so you don't save anything.
> Thus, might as well leave the page tables as they are.
>
> -Kevin
Yes, a page fault is still time consuming. However, once a page of
code has been translated, the code that calls that page no longer
needs to fault for any future invocations.
In other words, the scheme I outlined would result in a number of
faults proportional to the size of the code, where as the current
scheme results in a number of faults proportional to the running time
of the code.
Since, for the majority of programs, the majority of running time is
spent in a few critical loops and functions, I think there would be a
large benefit to a translate once, run natively "many times" scheme.
-Kevin
