[DotGNU]Portable.NET update 16 May 2002

[Rhys Weatherley]

Hi all,

I've spent most of this week tweaking the runtime engine
to improve performance.  I've acheived a 25% improvement
in CPU-bound benchmark test cases, and managed to do
away with "ilrun_opt" - "ilrun" is now faster!

Most of the improvements were related to the use of
computed gotos instead of "switch", and reducing the
overhead of method calls.  More changes are in the
pipeline.

Gopal implemented local constant declarations in the
C# compiler (very cool).  And there have been numerous
portability fixes for MacOSX and hpux (thanks to
Glen Chambers and James Mc Parlane for their help
with porting).

All of the above is in CVS.  No official release this
week.

I will be away in Adelaide for 4 days from tomorrow,
for a short vacation.  I will be out of e-mail contact
during this time, and will be unable to participate in
this week's DotGNU meeting.  I'll be back on Tuesday.

Cheers,

Rhys.