The Self implementation papers are some of the seminal contributions to modern high-speed VM design: http://selflanguage.org/documentation/published/index.html

The Self implementation papers are some of the seminal contributions to modern high-speed VM design: http://selflanguage.org/documentation/published/index.html#implementation http://selflanguage.org/documentation/published/index.html#i... David Ungar's dissertation, "The Design and Evaluation of a High Performance Smalltalk System" is also well-worth reading: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1986/CSD-86-287.pdf http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1986/CSD-86-287.p...