Re: [Qemu-devel] [patch] gcc4 host support

[Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com>]

> I am definetly out of my depth here, but... Speaking of GCJ's JIT...
>
> Sometime back, Ian Rogers here brought up the PearColator project at:
> http://www.binarytranslator.org/
>
> ***
> I have been working on an open source Java based PowerPC emulator based
> around a JVM's optimising compiler. If you have long running server like
> workloads then I have found the performance is approaching QEMU fast
> whilst having memory supported by a page based system. However, the
> system is a lot less sophisticated - booting operating systems and being
> a generic emulator is a distant reality. I have created a website at
> http://www.binarytranslator.org/ or
> http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/apt/projects/jamaica/tools/PearColator/ . I'm
> sure some people would be interested in this and may feel like they want
> to contribute. I'm happy to oblige and to share with QEMU. Thanks,
> ***
>
> Looks like he's getting at least some tolerable numbers...

I know I'd seen something like this before, thanks for reminding me.

There are several issues with PearColator/RVM:

- It's written in java. qemu is written in C, so a lot of porting would be 
required to get anything working.
- The best benchmark results are half the speed of qemu, and ten times slower 
appears to be a more typical result.
- I can't see an any way of doing an incremental transition. My code generator 
coexists with dyngen, allowing a gentle migration away from dyngen.

Paul