Hello Edward, On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 08:21:22AM -0500, Edward K. Ream wrote: > "Rumors have it that the secret goal is being faster-than-C which is > nonsense, isn't it?" My thinking about this has changed since then as the > result of reading the following two excellent HP tech reports: > > http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/1999/HPL-1999-77.pdf > http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/1999/HPL-1999-78.pdf
The Dynamo project. It is excellent because it shows that you can optimize in software at run-time a program that has been so-called super-optimized by a compiler, thus essentially showing that you can beat decades of efforts in static compilation with a run-time tool. For me it is a proof-of-concept, but I'm even more interested in the next logical step: if the compiler produced a "pseudo-binary" or something with explicit support for this later phase, e.g. pseudo-code with optimization hints instead of machine code, it would probably be even better. This is the direction in which I see this going. I wouldn't like it too much if the hardware directly supported this kind of technique, because it has a lot to gain from more extreme flexibility than hardware can provide. In other words, making a processor even more complex than they already are looks like a bad idea. In my opinions processors should be extremely dumb (no memory management, for example). An interesting middle ground, however, are processors with a built-in software layer over their core, like the Code Morphing one you mentioned which interprets x86 code over a different, simpler core. I like these approaches because I think that ultimately the software interpretation layer will be moved out of the processor and made part of the OS. A bient�t, Armin. _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-dev
