[Libjit-developers] Libjit x86 back end enabled

[Rhys Weatherley]

Hi all,

The CVS version of libjit now has the x86 back end enabled by default.  All of
the tutorials and existing test cases work with both the interpreter and x86.
If you run "./configure" and "make" on an x86 machine, you will get  real
JIT!  You can use "./configure --enable-interpreter" to force the interpreted
version of libjit, for comparison purposes.

There are still a number of instructions that need expansion for x86 to bring
it in line with the interpreter's capabilities, but it is very close.  And
the ARM back end is about half done.

The level of optimization is fairly modest at the moment: simple local
register allocation and variable dependency analysis.  But it does generate
pretty good x86 code despite that, and should beat the CVM unroller quite
comfortably when it is integrated into pnet.

Once the interpreter, x86, and ARM back ends are working well at this level of
optimization, then I'll be looking into other optimizations ("make it work
and then make it work better", as always).

Please let me know if there are any problems.

Cheers,

Rhys.