

Google working on JIT compiler for Android - dminor
http://groups.google.com/group/android-platform/browse_frm/thread/331d5f5636f5f532

======
10ren
FMI: "Dalvik is the virtual machine which runs the Java platform on Android
mobile devices"... but it's not a JVM: different file format and different
instruction set. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_virtual_machine>

------
Daishiman
Dalvik performance has nowhere to go but up. If there's anything good about
Java is that its terseness allows for loads of optimizations.

~~~
Xichekolas
> _... Java is that its terseness ..._

Compared to what? Java has a reputation for many things, but terseness of
syntax is not one of them.

I'm not trying to be derisive to the language, I just thought that was an odd
assertion to make.

~~~
mahmud
Elaborate syntax over an impoverished evaluation model and semantics. Java is
inspired by p-code; you could implement a p-code interpreted with one switch
statement in two pages.

A handful of primitive types + an straightforward single inheritence class
based object system. The GC is run of the mill. Control semantics are none
existent; try/catch is even more straightforward than C's longjmps.

The whole thing is small enough to be compiled for an early 90s set-top box
running a 16-bit micro, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's
beautiful.

------
yason
Here we go then, a very much anticipated move.

If only they could've hacked freely on the real JVM itself they could have
invested that huge amount of brainpower to improving something existing rather
than merely first starting from scratch with their own VM.

------
teilo
Here's hoping that Cyan manages to pull something off with this in a future
Cyanogen release. I can see a JIT running in a G1, and since we already are
able to run Apps off of a class 6 SD card, I don't see any reason not to cache
the compiled code.

------
scythe
This is awesome, but it also feels like something that should have been there
from the beginning.

~~~
sketerpot
Maybe, but there's something to be said for releasing an imperfect version
quickly and improving from there.

~~~
cliff
They very much believed that their optimized interpreter would be faster and
better than JITing. And it is optimized -- they took into account cache
locality, ARM instruction size, etc. You can read the design doc. They spent a
lot of time on it.

