OPEN SOURCE DYNAMIC COMPUTING RESEARCH PLATFORM
A platform for bytecode system research
To date, an open source research platform that allows interchangeable
modules implementing Just-In-Time compilers (JITs) and Garbage
Collection (GC) has not been available to the academic research
community. ORP (Open Runtime Platform) is an open source research
infrastructure project that provides these features thus enabling the
rapid evolution of systems research of dynamic compilation and memory
management.
ORP implements advanced JIT and GC interfaces. These interfaces allow
the JIT, GC and remaining runtime system to be developed in complete
isolation and at independent rates. A major benefit is that JIT and
GC researchers are relieved of the intractable task of developing a
full system before they can innovate in their area of
expertise.
Initially ORP interoperates with GNU Classpath. More info is at:
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/classpath.html.
GNU
Classpath is an open source library for the Java* language.
Current ORP source code compiles and runs on IA32 Linux and IA32
Windows 2000. Future updates will include JITs and GCs for IA64. GNU
Make makefiles are included for Linux builds. Microsoft VC++ 5.0
project files are included for the Windows 2000 build.
You can subscribe to a mailing list for ORP users and view its
archives at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orp
Application Performance
The basic system incorporates a fast code generating JIT as well as an
optimizing JIT. It also includes several GC algorithms, ranging from
a simple mark-sweep algorithm to an advanced train algorithm. MRL
academic papers on these topics are listed at: http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/library/java-pubs.htm.
Download
Intel invites the academic and open source communities to participate
in the evolution of these technologies. ORP source code can be
downloaded from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/orp.
Source code contributions
Small code fragments can be submitted through our web interface at Open
Runtime Platform Feedback. The ORP distribution contains
instructions for submitting more significant code contributions.
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