comment from James Gosling on multi-language VM

[Thomas Wuerthinger]

C actually runs very well on the JVM using Java bytecodes as shown by work of Matthias Grimmer [1]. This includes interoperability with other languages running on top of the JVM like JavaScript [2]. Current direction of this work is to extend to LLVM for expanding the support of AOT compiled languages beyond C. Also, the work includes a safe execution mode that runs C with security guarantees.

The coroutine [3] and continuation [4] work of Lukas Stadler demonstrates efficient implementations of those concepts on the JVM as well.

Another major aspect that has changed since 1995 are the advancements in the area of escape analysis and partial escape analysis to avoid object allocations [5, 6]. This makes modelling numbers as classes a lot more efficient and indeed enables the optimization of the calculations into “direct machine instructions” even when a lot of temporarily boxed objects are involved.

- thomas

[1] http://dl.acm.org/authorize.cfm?key=N96093 <http://dl.acm.org/authorize.cfm?key=N96093>
[2] http://dl.acm.org/authorize.cfm?key=N96005 <http://dl.acm.org/authorize.cfm?key=N96005>
[3] http://ssw.jku.at/Research/Papers/Stadler11Master/Stadler11Master.pdf <http://ssw.jku.at/Research/Papers/Stadler11Master/Stadler11Master.pdf>
[4] http://ssw.jku.at/Research/Papers/Stadler09/Stadler09a.pdf <http://ssw.jku.at/Research/Papers/Stadler09/Stadler09a.pdf>
[5] http://ssw.jku.at/Research/Papers/Stadler14/Stadler2014-CGO-PEA.pdf <http://ssw.jku.at/Research/Papers/Stadler14/Stadler2014-CGO-PEA.pdf>
[6] http://ssw.jku.at/Research/Papers/Stadler14PhD/ <http://ssw.jku.at/Research/Papers/Stadler14PhD/>


> On 17 Apr 2015, at 01:19, John Rose <john.r.rose at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> James made some relevant comments on the JVM as a multi-language engine.
> 
> It was just a little while ago, as I noticed going through some old files.
> 
> Folks are still working on specialized allocation (aka. value types) and continuations (aka. coroutines & tailcall).
> 
> Also, C is no longer "right out"; see Project Panama.
> 
> — John
> 
> From: owner-hotjava-interest-digest at java.Sun.COM
> To: hotjava-interest-digest at java.Sun.COM
> Subject:   hotjava-interest-digest V1 #24
> Date: Sat, 1 Apr 1995 17:34:17 -0800
> Reply-To: hotjava-interest at java.Sun.COM
> X-Info: To unsubscribe, send 'unsubscribe' to hotjava-interest-digest-request at java.sun.com
> 
> hotjava-interest-digest        Sunday, 2 April 1995        Volume 01 : Number 024
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> From: richard at cogsci.ed.ac.uk
> Date: Fri, 31 Mar 95 13:30:04 BST
> Subject: How general is the Java bytecode language?
> 
> Has anyone looked at the possibility of compiling languages other than
> Java to the Java bytecodes?  In particular, there seem to be many people
> interested in using Scheme as a scripting language, and the ability
> to download Scheme programs into HotJava would be nice.
> 
> - -- Richard
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ...
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> From: jag at scndprsn.Eng.Sun.COM (James Gosling)
> Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 20:34:24 +0800
> Subject: Re: How general is the Java bytecode language?
> 
>> Has anyone looked at the possibility of compiling languages other than
>> Java to the Java bytecodes?  In particular, there seem to be many people
>> interested in using Scheme as a scripting language, and the ability
>> to download Scheme programs into HotJava would be nice.
> 
> It's reasonably general, although the security restrictions make some
> languages hard.  C and C++ with general pointer arithmetic are right
> out.  Fortran's pass-by-reference call semantics and "common" are
> tough.  Pascal is pretty straightforward.  Scheme is easy or hard,
> depending on how good you want the performance to be: the invocation
> model in Java is very C like with no provision for continuations.
> Continuations can be handled as classes & the key trick in a compiler
> would be to decide when a full-blown continuation can be optimized
> away.  The story is similar with datatypes like numbers: in general,
> every number would be an instance of some class & the trick is to
> optimize that into direct machine instructions.  Using the Java
> bytecodes is likely to be somewhat less than optimal because things
> like continuations and general numbers need to be done as classes, the
> underlying engine doesn't have things like specialized allocators for
> boxed integers.
> 
> 
> Note to Sun employees: this is an EXTERNAL mailing list!
> Info: send 'help' to hotjava-interest-request at java.sun.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> mlvm-dev mailing list
> mlvm-dev at openjdk.java.net
> http://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo/mlvm-dev

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/mlvm-dev/attachments/20150417/da911871/attachment-0001.html>