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Intel's Open Runtime Platform Specs

Posted by timothy on from the ac-dc dept.

prostoalex writes "The new issue of Intel Technology Journal has a lengthy article on a new platform, developed in Intel labs. The Open Runtime Platform: A Flexible High-Performance Managed Runtime Environment describes the platform that is capable of running both Java VM and Microsoft's CLI, on both Windows and Linux platforms. Full PDF version is also available."

3 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. Is this... by 3-State+Bit · · Score: 4, Informative
    ...like Parrot?

    Apparently that already runs several languages, including Python and PHP...C++ and Java are definitely supposed to be supported.

    I think.

    From elsewhere:
    Since it is a virtual machine executing virtual assembler code, there are several different languages that compile to Parrot bytecode - it isn't limited to Perl! Here are some of the languages that have been so far done to varying degrees:

    Jako, a C-like language developed for testing Parrot

    Cola, likewise, but more Java-like

    BASIC

    Forth

    ...and an extremely rudimentary Perl 6 compiler...

    What do we think?

    1. Re:Is this... by XBL · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, this article just shows how interfaces creating abstraction can be implemented between the virtual machine, the just-in-time compiler, and the garbage collector without a performance hit.

      This level of separation then allows a better implementation of each of these components to be more easily created. For example, a JIT that supports both Java and CLI is more easy to design and implement. No knowledge of the VM (besides the interface) is needed to do this with ORP.

      Overall, a very impressive article.

    2. Re:Is this... by cbiffle · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nope, not like Parrot, because the JVM and CLI are not like Parrot. There are a lot of differences, but the two main ones are:
      -Static typing.
      -Stack-based (vs. register-based)

      The JVM and CLI are both designed for static-typed languages, like Java, C, C++, C#. Parrot's main deviation from previous VMs is its design around dynamically-typed languages like Perl and Ruby, with the corresponding techniques to make this fast.

      Furthermore, the JVM and CLI are both stack-based, while Parrot is register-based. These involve different optimization techniques and a different underlying virtualization.

      The framework described in the Intel paper is most definitely static-type oriented (they discuss the difference in casting-exceptions in C# and Java, and how they handle it), and most probably stack-oriented (though that doesn't seem specified).