VM fast enough?

[Michael Korns]

Rainer,

> Would you think a VM would be fast enough?
> Not for writing small gimmick applets, but for running
> publishing systems, 3d renderers, doing sound synthesis,
> CAD applications, multimedia environments, ...?
> Those are all Lisp applications of today.

Modern "32 bit VM's" are nothing more than raising a portable compiler's
"quads" to first class level and allowing an emulation option in addition
to a code generation option. Both in practice and by definition, modern 32
bit VM's are commensurate with efficient native code generation.
Incidentally, an added side benefit is that they emulate faster as well.
This has been our experience with AgentBase as well.


----------
> From: Rainer Joswig <joswig@lavielle.com>
> To: lispos@math.gatech.edu
> Subject: VM fast enough?
> Date: Sunday, April 27, 1997 11:16 AM
> 
> Would you think a VM would be fast enough?
> Not for writing small gimmick applets, but for running
> publishing systems, 3d renderers, doing sound synthesis,
> CAD applications, multimedia environments, ...?
> Those are all Lisp applications of today.
> 
> Would it be fast? I mean fast enough? Or even really
> fast? Without building a chip (-> SUN).
> How to incorporate MPEG playback, QuickTime, PostScript
> engine, JPEG de/compression, GZIP, TCP/IP, ...?
> Are there any VM implementations for Java that one
> would consider fast? JIT compilation?
> 
> - What should the Lisp OS do?
> - What would be typical
>   applications (a listener is barely enough)?
> - Where to start?
> - What are the target platforms?
> - What are the target users
>   (there are not that much Lisp hackers nowadays)?
> 
> Sorry for all those questions.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rainer Joswig, Lavielle EDV Systemberatung GmbH & Co, Lotharstrasse 2b,
D22041
> Hamburg, Tel: +49 40 658088, Fax: +49 40 65808-202,
> Email: joswig@lavielle.com , WWW: http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/
> 
>