[Python-Dev] Why is Bytecode the way it is?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jul 8, 2004, at 9:29 AM, Paul Prescod wrote:

> Michael Hudson wrote:
>> Python's VM is currently a stack machine.  There are arguments for
>> making it a register machine, but if we want to do that, lets go the
>> whole hog and not have some kind of half-assed hybrid.
>
> I'm not really talking about a register machine either. I don't 
> understand why you would want to copy values from a heap in "main 
> memory" into a register *still in main memory* to have the bytecodes 
> operate on them to store to a register and then back to main memory.
>
> Perhaps we take the CPU analogy too far. Or perhaps there is something 
> deep I misunderstand.

My guess is that register machines are a whole heck of a lot easier to 
JIT compile to efficient register CPU assembly code (at least on a 
platform that has more than 4 GPRs :).

-bob
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