Graal - first step

[Rémi Forax]

On 04/03/2012 04:57 PM, Thomas Wuerthinger wrote:
> On 03.04.2012 12:10, Rémi Forax wrote:
>> On 04/02/2012 12:10 PM, Douglas Simon wrote:
>>> Hi Remi,
>>>
>>> On Mar 30, 2012, at 7:13 PM, Rémi Forax wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi guys,
>>>> I've played a little with Graal and I've some questions (a lot in 
>>>> fact but I will send several messages :)
>>> We're ready for your questions - fire away ;-)
>>
>> I was exploring the idea to replace the bytecode backeend of a 
>> runtime like by example JRuby
>> to construct a graph of graal's node.
>> So please correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's not possible 
>> currently
>> or possible in a very restricted way because each method need to be 
>> have a bytecode attached.
>>
>> By example, a deoptimize node will call a code in Hotspot that will 
>> trigger the interpreter
>> so each method need a bytecode view.
> Yes. HotSpot forces us to always deoptimize to a valid bytecode 
> position. We are currently working on a new abstraction layer on top 
> of Graal that will remove this constraint.

Cool.
Let me know if I can help.

>> Another related problem is that there is currently no node that does 
>> profiling so
>> I can't generate a graph of nodes with profile information that I 
>> will be able to extract
>> using Graal interface with Hotspot.
> It is possible to generate a node that will lower itself to a 
> store/load to an object that is pointing to the profiling data. The 
> Graal snippet mechanism would allow to specify the lowering in Java 
> code (like we do with arraycopy intrinsification, see 
> ArrayCopySnippets class). What kind of general-purpose interface would 
> you suggest for weaving profiling code into the Graal IR?

I think some nodes like IfNode, SwitchNode, InstanceOfNode etc. should 
have a boolean
asking for generating the record code, in order to record branch taken,
type profile and exception seen.
By example for IfNode, a boolean profileBranchTakenProbability will ask
the code generator to generate the record code for each branch of the if.

and as you said, a new phase should be introduced that will add new 
Nodes (using snippet)
to generate the record code where it should be generated.

>
> - thomas

Rémi