Accession Number:

ADA172800

Title:

SOAR: Smalltalk Without Bytecodes

Descriptive Note:

Technical rept. 15 Nov 1981-30 Dec 1985

Corporate Author:

CALIFORNIA UNIV BERKELEY

Personal Author(s):

• Samples, A. D.
• Ungar, David
• Hilfinger, Paul

Report Date:

1985-12-30

Pagination or Media Count:

22.0

Abstract:

We have implemented Smalltalk-80 on an instruction-level simulator for a RISC microcomputer called SOAR. Measurements suggest that even a conventional computer can provide high performance for Smalltalk-80 by 1 abandoning the Smalltalk Virtual Machine in favor of compiling Smalltalk directly to SOAR machine code 2 linearizing the activation records on the machine stack 3 eliminating the object table and 4replacing reference counting with a new technique called Generation Scavenging. In order to adopt these techniques, we had to find new ways to support hash objects, accessing well-known objects, invoking blocks, referencing activation records, managing activation record stacks, and converting the virtual machine images.

Descriptors:

• *MACHINE CODING
• COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
• COMPUTER PROGRAMMING
• COMPUTERS
• INSTRUCTIONS
• MICROCOMPUTERS
• PROBLEM SOLVING
• RECORDS MANAGEMENT

Subject Categories:

• Computer Programming and Software
• Computer Hardware

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE