[pypy-dev] Object model

[VanL]

It seems like an appropriate time to ask this:

I know that we want to preserve language semantics.  However, are 
bytecode-level semantics similarly to be preserved, especially because 
bytecode isn't always portable between CPython versions?

More specifically, is a stack-based VM sacrosanct?  The traditional 
argument against register-based systems has been that they usually 
increase compiled code size. However, storage and bandwidth are becoming 
cheaper, and I think we could take advantage of "hardware" tricks like 
conditional execution and mulitple dispatch to significantly increase 
speed.  In fact, we could take advantage of the fact that "memory" 
accesses are just as cheap as "register" accesses for the PyPy VM and 
even use a memory-memory architecture.  That gives the highest code 
density -- even higher than stack-based bytecode -- and still allows 
most "hardware" tricks.

Finally, It allows for a nice abstraction of various parts of the 
execution engine - the "Integer Functional Unit" could be highly 
optimized, because it would always know that it was dealing with 
integers.  We wouldn't be stuck with machine types, though, we could 
have a "String Functional Unit" just as easily.

VanL