<
architecture> A
virtual machine implementation approach,
used to speed up execution of
byte-code programs. To
execute a program unit such as a
method or a
function, the
virtual machine compiles its bytecodes into (hardware) machine
code. The translated code is also placed in a cache, so that
next time that unit's machine code can be executed
immediately, without repeating the
translation.
This technique was pioneered by the commercial
Smalltalk
implementation currently known as
VisualWorks, in the early
1980s. Currently it is also used by some implementations of
the
Java Virtual Machine under the name
JIT (Just In Time
compilation).
[
Peter L. Deutsch and Alan Schiffman. "Efficient
Implementation of the Smalltalk-80 System", 11th Annual
Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Jan 1984,
pp. 297-302].
(2002-04-15)