4 ms·

After this gained prominence I took a hard read of Koopman's Stack Computers: The New Wave intent on writing an interpreter. I sought some optimization properti

After this gained prominence I took a hard read of Koopman's Stack Computers: The New Wave intent on writing an interpreter. I sought some optimization properties that would apply to the modern requirements for ILP, OoE and parallelization at low core frequencies -- none are offered. This manifests in WASM, and the criticism was elaborated very well: http://troubles.md/posts/wasm-is-not-a-stack-machine/ http://troubles.md/posts/wasm-is-not-a-stack-machine/ > This essentially makes WebAssembly a register machine without liveness analysis, but not only that, it’s a register machine that isn’t even in SSA form - both of the tools at our disposal to do optimisation are unavailable. In a true, optimising compiler we can recreate that information, but WebAssembly was already emitted by a compiler that generated that information once.

fmakunbound 4y ago
> ILP, OoE Moron here, what is that in this context?
- ithkuil 4y ago
  ILP: Instruction Level Parallelism OOE: Out of Order Execution
- andybak 4y ago
  You're not a moron. The use of acronyms (yeah, yeah, "initialisms") is bad writing unless you are 98% sure that your audience is familiar with them.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    Its a comment chain on a tech site not an introductory article. (Nothing wrong with not being familiar, i wasn't either, but it was totally reasonable for original poster to use them in context)
    - andybak 4y ago
      > Its a comment chain on a tech site not an introductory article. Yes, but it's a tech site with a broad audience. I still think it's nicer to avoid any but the most commonly understood acronyms. It's a hard call to make but there's no harm erring on the side of caution. Maybe I'm too prickly on this topic. In this particular case I think it's probably OK but I often see people misjudge this to the point where it's genuinely confusing for most of the audience.
tgv 4y ago
You'd like the browser to run code optimization phases?
- pdpi 4y ago
  With a JIT, the only question is which optimisations are worth the effort.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  It does already. Wasm compilers in browsers do tiering and inlining.
sifar 4y ago
Sadly, the compiler/software optimization for stack machines is a neglected field in computer architecture evolution. If you are interested in this, you might find these useful. 1) Optimisation Techniques for Stack Based Architectures - Christopher Bailey 2) Investigating Opportunities for Instruction-Level Parallelism for Stack Machine Code - Shi Huibin 3) Second-Generation Stack Computer Architecture - Charles Laforest [1] https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publications/CB_THESIS_1996.pdf.1 https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publicati... [2] https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publications/Shi_Huibin_PhD_thesis.pdf.1 https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publicati...

fmakunbound 4y ago

> ILP, OoE Moron here, what is that in this context?

ithkuil 4y ago
ILP: Instruction Level Parallelism OOE: Out of Order Execution
andybak 4y ago
You're not a moron. The use of acronyms (yeah, yeah, "initialisms") is bad writing unless you are 98% sure that your audience is familiar with them.
- bawolff 4y ago
  Its a comment chain on a tech site not an introductory article. (Nothing wrong with not being familiar, i wasn't either, but it was totally reasonable for original poster to use them in context)
  - andybak 4y ago
    > Its a comment chain on a tech site not an introductory article. Yes, but it's a tech site with a broad audience. I still think it's nicer to avoid any but the most commonly understood acronyms. It's a hard call to make but there's no harm erring on the side of caution. Maybe I'm too prickly on this topic. In this particular case I think it's probably OK but I often see people misjudge this to the point where it's genuinely confusing for most of the audience.

tgv 4y ago

You'd like the browser to run code optimization phases?

pdpi 4y ago
With a JIT, the only question is which optimisations are worth the effort.
kevingadd 4y ago
It does already. Wasm compilers in browsers do tiering and inlining.

sifar 4y ago

Sadly, the compiler/software optimization for stack machines is a neglected field in computer architecture evolution. If you are interested in this, you might find these useful. 1) Optimisation Techniques for Stack Based Architectures - Christopher Bailey 2) Investigating Opportunities for Instruction-Level Parallelism for Stack Machine Code - Shi Huibin 3) Second-Generation Stack Computer Architecture - Charles Laforest [1] https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publications/CB_THESIS_1996.pdf.1 https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publicati... [2] https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publications/Shi_Huibin_PhD_thesis.pdf.1 https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publicati...