Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/8] tcg/interpreter: Add TCG + interpreter for bytecode (virtual machine)

[Blue Swirl]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 10:49 AM, malc <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Sep 2011, Blue Swirl wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Stefan Weil <address@hidden> wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > these patches add a new code generator (TCG target) to qemu.
>> >
>> > Unlike other tcg target code generators, this one does not generate
>> > machine code for some cpu. It generates machine independent bytecode
>> > which is interpreted later. That's why I called it TCI (tiny code
>> > interpreter).
>> >
>> > I wrote most of the code two years ago and included feedback and
>> > contributions from several QEMU developers, notably TeleMan,
>> > Stuart Brady, Blue Swirl and Malc. See the history here:
>> > http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-09/msg01710.html
>> >
>> > Since that time, I used TCI regularly, added small fixes and improvements
>> > and rebased it to latest QEMU. Some versions were tested using
>> > ARM (emulated and real), PowerPC (emulated) and MIPS (emulated) hosts,
>> > but normally I run it on i386 and x86_64 hosts.
>> >
>> > I'd appreciate to see TCI in QEMU 1.0.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Stefan Weil
>> >
>> > The patches 2 and 4 are optional, patch 8 is only needed for running
>> > TCI on a PowerPC host.
>>
>> I think patches 1 to 4 and 8 could be applied soon as they are now,
>> they should benefit plain TCG too. I had some comments to other
>> patches, but otherwise everything looks great.
>
> Hold the horses untill Stefan settles the licensing issues.

Which issues? For which patches?

>>
>> Comparisons to other bytecode interpreters (for example Python) would
>> be interesting, maybe there are also tricks that can be reused.
>>
>> > [PATCH 1/8] tcg: Declare TCG_TARGET_REG_BITS in tcg.h
>> > [PATCH 2/8] tcg: Don't declare TCG_TARGET_REG_BITS in tcg-target.h
>> > [PATCH 3/8] tcg: Add forward declarations for local functions
>> > [PATCH 4/8] tcg: Add some assertions
>> > [PATCH 5/8] tcg: Add interpreter for bytecode
>> > [PATCH 6/8] tcg: Add bytecode generator for tcg interpreter
>> > [PATCH 7/8] tcg: Add tcg interpreter to configure / make
>> > [PATCH 8/8] ppc: Support tcg interpreter on ppc hosts
>> >
>> >
>>
>
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