research-article

Bytecodes meet combinators: invokedynamic on the JVM

Author:

John R. RoseAuthors Info & Claims

VMIL '09: Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Virtual Machines and Intermediate Languages

Article No.: 2, Pages 1 - 11

https://doi.org/10.1145/1711506.1711508

Published: 25 October 2009 Publication History

Abstract

The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) has been widely adopted in part because of its classfile format, which is portable, compact, modular, verifiable, and reasonably easy to work with. However, it was designed for just one language---Java---and so when it is used to express programs in other source languages, there are often "pain points" which retard both development and execution. The most salient pain points show up at a familiar place, the method call site.

To generalize method calls on the JVM, the JSR 292 Expert Group has designed a new invokedynamic instruction that provides user-defined call site semantics. In the chosen design, invokedynamic serves as a hinge-point between two coexisting kinds of intermediate language: bytecode containing dynamic call sites, and combinator graphs specifying call targets. A dynamic compiler can traverse both representations simultaneously, producing optimized machine code which is the seamless union of both kinds of input. As a final twist, the user-defined linkage of a call site may change, allowing the code to adapt as the application evolves over time. The result is a system balancing the conciseness of bytecode with the dynamic flexibility of function pointers.

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Silva LMetrôlho JRibeiro F(2024)Efficient Data Exchange between WebAssembly ModulesFuture Internet10.3390/fi1609034116:9(341)Online publication date: 20-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/fi16090341
Helm DRoth TKeidel SReif MMezini MChristakis MPradel M(2024)Unimocg: Modular Call-Graph Algorithms for Consistent Handling of Language FeaturesProceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3650212.3652109(51-62)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3650212.3652109
Schütze LCastrillon JTanabe YSchütze LHirschfeld RIgarashi AMasuhara H(2023)Towards Virtual Machine Support for Contextual Role-Oriented Programming LanguagesProceedings of the 15th ACM International Workshop on Context-Oriented Programming and Advanced Modularity10.1145/3605154.3605851(1-8)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605154.3605851
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Index Terms

Bytecodes meet combinators: invokedynamic on the JVM
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Source code generation
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Control structures
        Polymorphism
        Procedures, functions and subroutines

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cover image ACM Conferences

VMIL '09: Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Virtual Machines and Intermediate Languages

October 2009

47 pages

ISBN:9781605588742

DOI:10.1145/1711506

Conference Chairs:
Hridesh Rajan
Iowa State University
,
Christoph Bockisch
University of Twente, Netherlands
,
Michael Haupt
Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany
,
Robert Dyer
Iowa State University

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

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Published: 25 October 2009

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OOPSLA09: ACM SIGPLAN Object Oriented Programming Systems and Applications Conference

October 25 - 29, 2009

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https://doi.org/10.3390/fi16090341
Helm DRoth TKeidel SReif MMezini MChristakis MPradel M(2024)Unimocg: Modular Call-Graph Algorithms for Consistent Handling of Language FeaturesProceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3650212.3652109(51-62)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3650212.3652109
Schütze LCastrillon JTanabe YSchütze LHirschfeld RIgarashi AMasuhara H(2023)Towards Virtual Machine Support for Contextual Role-Oriented Programming LanguagesProceedings of the 15th ACM International Workshop on Context-Oriented Programming and Advanced Modularity10.1145/3605154.3605851(1-8)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605154.3605851
Schütze LKummer CCastrillon J(2022)Guard the Cache: Dispatch Optimization in a Contextual Role-oriented LanguageProceedings of the 14th ACM International Workshop on Context-Oriented Programming and Advanced Modularity10.1145/3570353.3570357(27-34)Online publication date: 7-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3570353.3570357
Schütze LCastrillon JMarr S(2020)Efficient dispatch of multi-object polymorphic call sites in contextual role-oriented programming languagesProceedings of the 17th International Conference on Managed Programming Languages and Runtimes10.1145/3426182.3426186(52-62)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2020
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Awan MBletsas KSouto PAkesson BTovar E(2019)Techniques and Analysis for Mixed-criticality Scheduling with Mode-dependent Server Execution BudgetsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/335823418:5s(1-23)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2019
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Zhang JRaj PZarar SAmbardekar AGarg S(2019)CompActACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/335817818:5s(1-24)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2019
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Schütze LCastrillon JNierstrasz OGray JOliveira B(2019)Efficient late binding of dynamic function compositionsProceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/3357766.3359543(141-151)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2019
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Xu SBremner DHeidinga DBlackburn SBockisch CHaupt MHosking TRajan HSrisa-an WGrimmer MWelc A(2017)Fusing method handle graphs for efficient dynamic JVM language implementationsProceedings of the 9th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Virtual Machines and Intermediate Languages10.1145/3141871.3141874(18-27)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2017
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