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Hardwired polymorphism

Could you assist me in finding a previous discussion related to "hardwired" polymorphism, in which instead of relying on runtime information such as a class tag the dispatch uses a separate version of the function for each possible type. I imagine that could be implemented using C++ templates but I forgot the details.

The issue was of course the explosion of function signatures, but that is probably bound by the amount of interdependence between classes. If I remember correctly a concrete application is for programming embedded systems.

By Denis Bredelet -jido at 2008-05-15 11:27 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 5000 reads

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Method Specialization?

It sounds like you're talking about "Method Specialization". This is one of the techniques developed for the Self system and now used in Java's JIT compiler.
Self/Java avoid the explosion of function signatures by performing the specialization at run-time on only those methods which are invoked a lot (ie. hot-spots).

From:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=74831

Our system compiles several copies of a given procedure, each customized for one receiver type, so that the type of the receiver is bound at compile time.

By Kevin Greer at Thu, 2008-05-15 14:02 | login or register to post comments

Thanks, it is indeed

Thanks, it is indeed method specialisation. The link requires a subscription though.

By Denis Bredelet -jido at Thu, 2008-05-15 14:21 | login or register to post comments

Self Docs

You can search there :
http://research.sun.com/self/
there are plenty of papers on the Self technology, including Craig Chamber's thesis on the Self compiler :
http://research.sun.com/self/papers/craig-thesis.html

By odanet at Fri, 2008-05-16 08:21 | login or register to post comments

Good idea

Good idea to redirect me to the Self docs, it is totally relevant to the work on my language. I should have taken the clue earlier as it will definitely help me. I suppose the talk about specialisation is in the compiler paper?

By Denis Bredelet -jido at Fri, 2008-05-16 23:07 | login or register to post comments

Psyco

Psyco may be of interest too: it's a specialising compiler for python. The website has links to a few papers as well as the source code.

By Vilya Harvey at Fri, 2008-05-16 13:19 | login or register to post comments