There's several examples of P-code/Pascal VMs around [0][1][2][3].
Some more detailed than others.
[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine#Example_machine
[1]
http://www.icodeguru.com/vc/10book/books/book4/secg.htm
[2]
http://blackmesatech.com/2011/12/pl0/pl0.xhtml
[3]
https://github.com/lkesteloot/turbopascal
On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Kamil Cholewiński <harry666t_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Jun 2016, Connor Lane Smith <cls_AT_lubutu.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I was wondering if others had an opinion on JIT. Suppose we don't need
>> anything fancy like adaptive optimisation, but just wanted to compile
>> a program at runtime. One possibility might be to generate C code and
>> store that in a file and then call the C compiler and then execute the
>> resulting binary... But that seems a bit unpleasant, prone to
>> compilation failure, and not particularly lightweight either.
>>
>> One solution could be simply to produce assembly code, but then that
>> is tied to a specific architecture, which is unfortunate. There's also
>> LLVM, but that is a very big and complicated dependency, which
>> shouldn't really be necessary if we're just jitting something quickly
>> and don't mind it being a little unoptimised for the sake of
>> simplicity and speed of compilation. We just want to portably generate
>> machine code and then run it.
>>
>> An ideal might be something like an abstract instruction set together
>> with a JIT for the abstract machine. To be honest a JIT might not even
>> be necessary so long as it is has very little interpretation overhead,
>> the instruction set is general purpose and fixed, and it plays well
>> with the C memory model.
>>
>> Does anyone have any ideas?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> cls
>
> Hi Connor,
>
> Creating a simple and general-purpose VM shouldn't be hard! It used to
> be my favourite exercise for learning a new programming language.
>
> Probably much more difficult to get real-world performance; I wouldn't
> be surprised if the initial efforts resulted in a 1000x-slower-than-C
> execution speed for typical programs.
>
> With lots of test cases, tuning, benchmarks, and generally a lot of hard
> work, I can imagine you could bring it to the 10-100x-slower[1] class.
>
> [1]: https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=python3&lang2=gcc
>
> Of course this doesn't matter that much if your purpose is mostly
> scripting behavior (games), or IO-bound stuff (as in waiting for
> database - things like Snabb[2] actually do need some real power).
> Having good C interop via FFI can save you in many cases.
>
> [2]: https://github.com/snabbco/snabb
>
> Yes, JITing is inherently architecture-specific, but the bytecode can be
> designed with trade-offs between interpretation and compilation speed.
> These days supporting x86-64, ARM and MIPS probably covers >99% of the
> devices you'll ever encounter in the wild; the rest can run a bit slower
> until someone is motivated enough to write a JIT backend.
>
> I've never had a close look at any of the Big Name VMs, as most of that
> code must suck horribly. Some real-world VMs&JITs however remained
> relatively simple - I think there might be a lot to learn from Dis[3]
> and LuaJIT[4].
>
> [3]: http://doc.cat-v.org/inferno/4th_edition/dis_VM_design
> [4]: http://luajit.org/
>
> If you have some concrete applications in mind, please do share. I'd
> gladly give a shot at prototyping something in this area.
>
> <3,K.
>
Received on Sun Jun 19 2016 - 00:17:14 CEST