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Lecture

Interpreters and Virtual Machines

In course

CS-420: Advanced compiler construction

Students learn several implementation techniques for modern functional and object-oriented programming languages. They put some of them into practice by developing key parts of a compiler and run time system for a simple functional programming language. ...

Description

This lecture covers the concepts of interpreters and virtual machines. It explains the pros and cons of interpreters, the differences between text-based and tree-based interpreters, the role and advantages of virtual machines, and the drawbacks they face in terms of performance. The lecture also delves into the implementation of virtual machines, different types of virtual machines, and optimization techniques such as threaded code and top-of-stack caching. It concludes with a detailed discussion on memory management, explicit and implicit deallocation, garbage collection techniques, and the challenges associated with fragmentation.

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Instructor

Michel Schinz

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Theoretical computer science

Programming language theory: High-level programming languages

Related concepts (32)

Virtual machine

In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software, or a combination of the two. Virtual machines differ and are organized by their function, shown here: System virtual machines (also called full virtualization VMs) provide a substitute for a real machine. They provide the functionality needed to execute entire operating systems.

Threaded code

In computer science, threaded code is a programming technique where the code has a form that essentially consists entirely of calls to subroutines. It is often used in compilers, which may generate code in that form or be implemented in that form themselves. The code may be processed by an interpreter or it may simply be a sequence of machine code call instructions. Threaded code has better density than code generated by alternative generation techniques and by alternative calling conventions.

Java virtual machine

A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describes what is required in a JVM implementation. Having a specification ensures interoperability of Java programs across different implementations so that program authors using the Java Development Kit (JDK) need not worry about idiosyncrasies of the underlying hardware platform.

Interpreter (computing)

In computer science, an interpreter is a computer program that directly executes instructions written in a programming or scripting language, without requiring them previously to have been compiled into a machine language program. An interpreter generally uses one of the following strategies for program execution: Parse the source code and perform its behavior directly; Translate source code into some efficient intermediate representation or object code and immediately execute that; Explicitly execute stored precompiled bytecode made by a compiler and matched with the interpreter Virtual Machine.

Stack machine

In computer science, computer engineering and programming language implementations, a stack machine is a computer processor or a virtual machine in which the primary interaction is moving short-lived temporary values to and from a push down stack. In the case of a hardware processor, a hardware stack is used. The use of a stack significantly reduces the required number of processor registers. Stack machines extend push-down automata with additional load/store operations or multiple stacks and hence are Turing-complete.

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