Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/8] tcg/interpreter: Add TCG + interpreter for bytecode (virtual machine)

[malc]

On Sun, 18 Sep 2011, Blue Swirl wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Stefan Weil <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > these patches add a new code generator (TCG target) to qemu.
> >
> > Unlike other tcg target code generators, this one does not generate
> > machine code for some cpu. It generates machine independent bytecode
> > which is interpreted later. That's why I called it TCI (tiny code
> > interpreter).
> >
> > I wrote most of the code two years ago and included feedback and
> > contributions from several QEMU developers, notably TeleMan,
> > Stuart Brady, Blue Swirl and Malc. See the history here:
> > http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-09/msg01710.html
> >
> > Since that time, I used TCI regularly, added small fixes and improvements
> > and rebased it to latest QEMU. Some versions were tested using
> > ARM (emulated and real), PowerPC (emulated) and MIPS (emulated) hosts,
> > but normally I run it on i386 and x86_64 hosts.
> >
> > I'd appreciate to see TCI in QEMU 1.0.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Stefan Weil
> >
> > The patches 2 and 4 are optional, patch 8 is only needed for running
> > TCI on a PowerPC host.
> 
> I think patches 1 to 4 and 8 could be applied soon as they are now,
> they should benefit plain TCG too. I had some comments to other
> patches, but otherwise everything looks great.

Hold the horses untill Stefan settles the licensing issues.

> 
> Comparisons to other bytecode interpreters (for example Python) would
> be interesting, maybe there are also tricks that can be reused.
> 
> > [PATCH 1/8] tcg: Declare TCG_TARGET_REG_BITS in tcg.h
> > [PATCH 2/8] tcg: Don't declare TCG_TARGET_REG_BITS in tcg-target.h
> > [PATCH 3/8] tcg: Add forward declarations for local functions
> > [PATCH 4/8] tcg: Add some assertions
> > [PATCH 5/8] tcg: Add interpreter for bytecode
> > [PATCH 6/8] tcg: Add bytecode generator for tcg interpreter
> > [PATCH 7/8] tcg: Add tcg interpreter to configure / make
> > [PATCH 8/8] ppc: Support tcg interpreter on ppc hosts
> >
> >
> 

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