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75 lines
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75 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 09:19:35 -0600 (CST)
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From: Vikram Adve <vadve@cs.uiuc.edu>
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To: Chris Lattner <lattner@cs.uiuc.edu>
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Subject: a few thoughts
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I've been mulling over the virtual machine problem and I had some
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thoughts about some things for us to think about discuss:
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1. We need to be clear on our goals for the VM. Do we want to emphasize
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portability and safety like the Java VM? Or shall we focus on the
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architecture interface first (i.e., consider the code generation and
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processor issues), since the architecture interface question is also
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important for portable Java-type VMs?
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This is important because the audiences for these two goals are very
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different. Architects and many compiler people care much more about
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the second question. The Java compiler and OS community care much more
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about the first one.
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Also, while the architecture interface question is important for
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Java-type VMs, the design constraints are very different.
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2. Design issues to consider (an initial list that we should continue
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to modify). Note that I'm not trying to suggest actual solutions here,
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but just various directions we can pursue:
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a. A single-assignment VM, which we've both already been thinking about.
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b. A strongly-typed VM. One question is do we need the types to be
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explicitly declared or should they be inferred by the dynamic compiler?
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c. How do we get more high-level information into the VM while keeping
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to a low-level VM design?
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o Explicit array references as operands? An alternative is
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to have just an array type, and let the index computations be
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separate 3-operand instructions.
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o Explicit instructions to handle aliasing, e.g.s:
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-- an instruction to say "I speculate that these two values are not
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aliased, but check at runtime", like speculative execution in
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EPIC?
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-- or an instruction to check whether two values are aliased and
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execute different code depending on the answer, somewhat like
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predicated code in EPIC
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o (This one is a difficult but powerful idea.)
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A "thread-id" field on every instruction that allows the static
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compiler to generate a set of parallel threads, and then have
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the runtime compiler and hardware do what they please with it.
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This has very powerful uses, but thread-id on every instruction
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is expensive in terms of instruction size and code size.
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We would need to compactly encode it somehow.
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Also, this will require some reading on at least two other
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projects:
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-- Multiscalar architecture from Wisconsin
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-- Simultaneous multithreading architecture from Washington
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o Or forget all this and stick to a traditional instruction set?
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BTW, on an unrelated note, after the meeting yesterday, I did remember
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that you had suggested doing instruction scheduling on SSA form instead
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of a dependence DAG earlier in the semester. When we talked about
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it yesterday, I didn't remember where the idea had come from but I
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remembered later. Just giving credit where its due...
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Perhaps you can save the above as a file under RCS so you and I can
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continue to expand on this.
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--Vikram
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