[pypy-svn] r60517 - pypy/extradoc/talk/ecoop2009

antocuni at codespeak.net antocuni at codespeak.net
Tue Dec 16 17:52:34 CET 2008


Author: antocuni
Date: Tue Dec 16 17:52:32 2008
New Revision: 60517

Added:
   pypy/extradoc/talk/ecoop2009/benchmarks.tex
Modified:
   pypy/extradoc/talk/ecoop2009/main.tex
Log:
start the benchmark section



Added: pypy/extradoc/talk/ecoop2009/benchmarks.tex
==============================================================================
--- (empty file)
+++ pypy/extradoc/talk/ecoop2009/benchmarks.tex	Tue Dec 16 17:52:32 2008
@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
+\section{The TLC language}
+
+\anto{maybe we should move this section somewhere else, if we want to use TLC
+  as a running example in other sections}
+
+In this section, we will briefly describe \emph{TLC}, a simple dynamic
+language that we developed to exercise our JIT compiler generator.  As most of
+dynamic languages around, \emph{TLC} is implemented through a virtual machine
+that interprets a custom bytecode. Since our main interest is in the runtime
+performances of the VM, we did not implement the parser nor the bytecode
+compiler, but only the VM itself.
+
+TLC provides four different types:
+\begin{enumerate}
+\item Integers
+\item \lstinline{nil}, whose only value is the null value
+\item Objects
+\item Lisp-like lists
+\end{enumerate}
+
+Objects represent a collection of named attributes (much like Javascript or
+SELF) and named methods.  At creation time, it is necessary to specify the set
+of attributes of the object, as well as its methods.  Once the object has been
+created, it is not possible to add/remove attributes and methods.
+
+The virtual machine is stack-based, and provides several operations:
+
+\begin{itemize}
+\item \textbf{Stack manipulation}: standard operations to manipulate the
+  stack, such as \lstinline{PUSH}, \lstinline{POP}, \lstinline{SWAP}, etc.
+\item \textbf{Flow control} to do conditional and unconditional jumps.
+\item \textbf{Arithmetic}: numerical operations on integers, like
+  \lstinline{ADD}, \lstinline{SUB}, etc.
+\item \textbf{Comparisons} like \lstinline{EQ}, \lstinline{LT},
+  \lstinline{GT}, etc.
+\item \textbf{Object-oriented}: operations on objects: \lstinline{NEW},
+  \lstinline{GETATTR}, \lstinline{SETATTR}, \lstinline{SEND}.
+\item \textbf{List operations}: \lstinline{CONS}, \lstinline{CAR},
+  \lstinline{CDR}.
+\end{itemize}
+
+Obviously, not all the operations are applicable to all objects. For example,
+it is not possibile to \lstinline{ADD} an integer and an object, or reading an
+attribute from an object which does not provide it.  Being a dynamic language,
+the VM needs to do all these checks at runtime; in case one of the check
+fails, the execution is simply aborted.
+
+\anto{should we try to invent a syntax for TLC and provide some examples?}
+
+\section{Benchmarks}
+
+Despite being very simple and minimalistic, \lstinline{TLC} is a good
+candidate as a language to run benchmarks, as it has some of the features that
+makes most of current dynamic languages so slow:
+
+\begin{itemize}
+
+\item \textbf{Stack based VM}: this kind of VM requires all the operands to be
+  on top of the evaluation stack.  As a consequence programs spend a lot of
+  time pushing and popping values to/from the stack, or doing other stack
+  related operations.  However, thanks ot its semplicity this is still the
+  most common and preferred way to implement VMs.
+
+\item \textbf{Boxed integers}: integer objects are internally represented as
+  an instance of the \lstinline{IntObj} class, whose field \lstinline{value}
+  contains the real value.  By having boxed integers, common ariithmetic
+  operations are made very slow, because each time we want to load/store their
+  value we need to go through an extra level of indirection.  Moreover, in
+  case of a complex expression, it is necessary to create a lot of temporary
+  objects to hold intermediate results.
+
+\item \textbf{Dynamic lookup}: attributes and methods are looked up at
+  runtime, because there is no way to know in advance if and where an object
+  have that particular attribute or method.
+\end{itemize}
+

Modified: pypy/extradoc/talk/ecoop2009/main.tex
==============================================================================
--- pypy/extradoc/talk/ecoop2009/main.tex	(original)
+++ pypy/extradoc/talk/ecoop2009/main.tex	Tue Dec 16 17:52:32 2008
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
 
 %\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{.98}
 \newcommand{\dacom}[1]{{\small [{\bf DA}: #1]}}
+\newcommand{\anto}[1]{{\small [{\bf ANTO}: #1]}}
 \newcommand{\commentout}[1]{}
 
 \begin{document}
@@ -63,6 +64,7 @@
 \input{jitgen}
 \input{rainbow}
 \input{clibackend}
+\input{benchmarks}
 %\input{conclusion}
 
 \bibliographystyle{plain}



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