License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2019.4
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-107969
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2019/10796/
Go to the corresponding LIPIcs Volume Portal

Vergu, Vlad ; Tolmach, Andrew ; Visser, Eelco

Scopes and Frames Improve Meta-Interpreter Specialization

pdf-format:
LIPIcs-ECOOP-2019-4.pdf (0.8 MB)

Abstract

DynSem is a domain-specific language for concise specification of the dynamic semantics of programming languages, aimed at rapid experimentation and evolution of language designs. To maintain a short definition-to-execution cycle, DynSem specifications are meta-interpreted. Meta-interpretation introduces runtime overhead that is difficult to remove by using interpreter optimization frameworks such as the Truffle/Graal Java tools; previous work has shown order-of-magnitude improvements from applying Truffle/Graal to a meta-interpreter, but this is still far slower than what can be achieved with a language-specific interpreter. In this paper, we show how specifying the meta-interpreter using scope graphs, which encapsulate static name binding and resolution information, produces much better optimization results from Truffle/Graal. Furthermore, we identify that JIT compilation is hindered by large numbers of calls between small polymorphic rules and we introduce rule cloning to derive larger monomorphic rules at run time as a countermeasure. Our contributions improve the performance of DynSem-derived interpreters to within an order of magnitude of a handwritten language-specific interpreter.

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{vergu_et_al:LIPIcs:2019:10796,
  author =	{Vlad Vergu and Andrew Tolmach and Eelco Visser},
  title =	{{Scopes and Frames Improve Meta-Interpreter Specialization}},
  booktitle =	{33rd European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2019)},
  pages =	{4:1--4:30},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-111-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{134},
  editor =	{Alastair F. Donaldson},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2019/10796},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-107969},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2019.4},
  annote =	{Keywords: Definitional interpreters, partial evaluation}
}

Keywords: Definitional interpreters, partial evaluation
Collection: 33rd European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2019)
Issue Date: 2019
Date of publication: 10.07.2019

DROPS-Home | Fulltext Search | Imprint | Privacy Published by LZI