Bytecode branch processor and method

Abstract

A bytecode interpreter in a computing system is provided. The interpreter assists in branch prediction by a host processor that processes a virtual machine such as JAVA TM and DALVIK TM , thereby reducing branch misprediction and achieving high performance.

Description

[0001] This application claims the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. 10-2010-0125688 filed with the Korean Intellectual Property Office on December 9, 2010, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes. technical field [0002] The following description relates to a bytecode interpreter (interpreter) in a computing system, and more specifically, relates to a method for effectively removing branch mispredictions or Pipeline stall penalties, branch handlers and methods to improve bytecode interpreter performance. Background technique [0003] A lot of research has been done to improve the performance of virtual machines to process Java bytecode. In particular, the performance of the virtual machine is significantly enhanced by just-in-time compilation (JITC, Just-in-time compilation). [0004] However, it is difficult for embedded systems to effectively introduce JITC because of resource constraints and user-sensitive latencies, s...

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Problems solved by technology

[0006] The direct thread approach has the disadvantage that the branch instruction, being an indirect branch instruction, confuses the branch predictor of a real processor (e.g., x86 or ARM), leading to a large number of branch mispredictions and performance degradation

In order to solve such disadvantages, various methods including selective inlining and associated threading technology (context threading) were introduced, but caused disadvantages of code size increase and call / return overhead

[0010] Also, hardware implementations such as Jazelle DBX (some less frequently used instructions are implemented as software processors) are high performance, but require a lot of hardware resources, and cannot handle new types of bytecodes (e.g., Dalvik)

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