Structure of the HotSpot Interpreter

[Julian Waters]

Hi David,

Ah, I remember reading through that article some time ago, and it did
get me familiarized with the basic concepts in the Interpreter, but
unfortunately it isn't really a deep dive into HotSpot's internals and
the nitty gritty of how the code all meshes together, additionally
there seems to be a little bit of inaccuracy in it (stating that
HotSpot is Direct Threaded when it really is Token Threaded for
instance). Thanks for the pointer though!

best regards,
Julian

On Thu, May 30, 2024 at 9:47 PM Julian Waters <tanksherman27 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've recently been trying to learn more about HotSpot and studying its
> internals, but the structure of the Interpreter seems to elude me
> still. I'm aware that HotSpot doesn't use a traditional switch case
> (Well, at least not usually, looking at you Zero Port), but how it
> functions is more or less still a black box to me. What kind of
> dispatch mechanism does it use, for instance? Is it Direct Threaded,
> Indirect Threaded, Token Threaded, or something else entirely? Is
> there somewhere I can learn about how everything connects together?
> I've tried reading the HotSpot documentation online but there doesn't
> seem to be an in-depth explanation in them for how it all fits
> together, I'd greatly appreciate if someone points me in the right
> direction
>
> best regards,
> Julian