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Efficient interpretation using quickening

Published: 18 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Just-in-time compilers offer the biggest achievable payoff performance-wise, but their implementation is a non-trivial, time-consuming task affecting the interpreter's maintenance for years to come, too. Recent research addresses this issue by providing ways of leveraging existing just-in-time compilation infrastructures.
Though there has been considerable research on improving the efficiency of just-in-time compilers, the area of optimizing interpreters has gotten less attention as if the implementation of a dynamic translation system was the "ultima ratio" for efficiently interpreting programming languages. We present optimization techniques for improving the efficiency of interpreters without requiring just-in-time compilation thereby maintaining the ease-of-implementation characteristic that brought many people to implementing an interpreter in the first place.

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cover image ACM Conferences
DLS '10: Proceedings of the 6th symposium on Dynamic languages
October 2010
120 pages
ISBN:9781450304054
DOI:10.1145/1869631
  • cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
    ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 45, Issue 12
    DLS '10
    December 2010
    107 pages
    ISSN:0362-1340
    EISSN:1558-1160
    DOI:10.1145/1899661
    Issue’s Table of Contents
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Published: 18 October 2010

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Author Tags

  1. instruction format
  2. interpreter
  3. python
  4. quickening
  5. reference counting

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