research-article

An object storage model for the truffle language implementation framework

Authors:

Christian Wirth,

Daniele Bonetta,

Christian Humer,

Hanspeter MössenböckAuthors Info & Claims

PPPJ '14: Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Principles and Practices of Programming on the Java platform: Virtual machines, Languages, and Tools

Pages 133 - 144

https://doi.org/10.1145/2647508.2647517

Published: 23 September 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Truffle is a Java-based framework for developing high-performance language runtimes. Language implementers aiming at developing new runtimes have to design all the runtime mechanisms for managing dynamically typed objects from scratch. This not only leads to potential code duplication, but also impacts the actual time needed to develop a fully-fledged runtime.

In this paper we address this issue by introducing a common object storage model (OSM) for Truffle that can be used by language implementers to develop new runtimes. The OSM is generic, language-agnostic, and portable, as it can be used to implement a great variety of dynamic languages. It is extensible, featuring built-in support for custom extension mechanisms. It is also high-performance, as it is designed to benefit from the optimizing compiler in the Truffle framework. Our initial evaluation indicates that the Truffle OSM can be used to implement high-performance language runtimes, with no performance overhead when compared to language-specific solutions.

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Index Terms

An object storage model for the truffle language implementation framework
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Runtime environments

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