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Stack caching for interpreters

Author:

M. Anton ErtlAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 30, Issue 6

Pages 315 - 327

https://doi.org/10.1145/223428.207165

Published: 01 June 1995 Publication History

Abstract

An interpreter can spend a significant part of its execution time on accessing arguments of virtual machine instructions. This paper explores two methods to reduce this overhead for virtual stack machines by caching top-of-stack values in (real machine) registers. The dynamic method is based on having, for every possible state of the cache, one specialized version of the whole interpreter; the execution of an instruction usually changes the state of the cache and the next instruction is executed in the version corresponding to the new state. In the static method a state machine that keeps track of the cache state is added to the compiler. Common instructions exist in specialized versions for several states, but it is not necessary to have a version of every instruction for every cache state. Stack manipulation instructions are optimized away.

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Cited By

Polito GPalumbo NLabsari SDucasse STesone P(2022)Interpreter Register Autolocalisation: Improving the Performance of Efficient InterpretersCompanion Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming10.1145/3532512.3532518(1-5)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532512.3532518
Mashimo SShioya RInoue K(2018)VMOR: Microarchitectural Support for Operand Access in an InterpreterIEEE Computer Architecture Letters10.1109/LCA.2018.286624317:2(217-220)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/LCA.2018.2866243
Collberg CMartin SMyers JNagra JZakon R(2012)Distributed application tamper detection via continuous software updatesProceedings of the 28th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference10.1145/2420950.2420997(319-328)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2420950.2420997
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Stack caching for interpreters
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Interpreters
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language types

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 30, Issue 6

June 1995

327 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/223428

Editors:
Brent T. Hailpern
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heoghts, NY
,
Richard L. Wexelblat
IRS IS:AO, Washington, DC

Issue’s Table of Contents

PLDI '95: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1995 conference on Programming language design and implementation
June 1995
335 pages
ISBN:0897916972
DOI:10.1145/207110
Chairman:
David W. Wall
Digital—Western Research Laboratory

Copyright © 1995 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 June 1995

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 30, Issue 6

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Cited By

Polito GPalumbo NLabsari SDucasse STesone P(2022)Interpreter Register Autolocalisation: Improving the Performance of Efficient InterpretersCompanion Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming10.1145/3532512.3532518(1-5)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532512.3532518
Mashimo SShioya RInoue K(2018)VMOR: Microarchitectural Support for Operand Access in an InterpreterIEEE Computer Architecture Letters10.1109/LCA.2018.286624317:2(217-220)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/LCA.2018.2866243
Collberg CMartin SMyers JNagra JZakon R(2012)Distributed application tamper detection via continuous software updatesProceedings of the 28th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference10.1145/2420950.2420997(319-328)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2420950.2420997
Gregg DErtl M(2006)Optimizing code‐copying JIT compilers for virtual stack machinesConcurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience10.1002/cpe.101618:11(1465-1484)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2006
https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.1016
Shudo KSekiguchi SMuraoka Y(2004)Cost‐effective compilation techniques for Java Just‐in‐Time compilersSystems and Computers in Japan10.1002/scj.1056435:12(10-24)Online publication date: Sep-2004
https://doi.org/10.1002/scj.10564
Ertl MGregg DKrall APaysan B(2002)VmgenSoftware—Practice & Experience10.1002/spe.43432:3(265-294)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2002
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/spe.434
Gregg DErtl MKrall A(2001)Implementing an Efficient Java InterpreterHigh-Performance Computing and Networking10.1007/3-540-48228-8_70(613-620)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2001
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48228-8_70
Hoogerbrugge JAugusteijn L(2001)Pipelined Java Virtual Machine InterpretersCompiler Construction10.1007/3-540-46423-9_3(35-49)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2001
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46423-9_3
Ertl MGregg D(2001)The Behavior of Efficient Virtual Machine Interpreters on Modern ArchitecturesEuro-Par 2001 Parallel Processing10.1007/3-540-44681-8_59(403-413)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2001
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44681-8_59
Larose OKaleba SBurchell HMarr S(2023)AST vs. Bytecode: Interpreters in the Age of Meta-CompilationProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228087:OOPSLA2(318-346)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622808
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