[virtmach] parrot VM?

[Anton Ertl]

kyle wrote:
> There was a bit of Q&A posted about Parrot on the use Perl site and one of 
> the questions was "register based?".  The response indicated that a 
> register-based VM is more efficient than a stack-based VM even on x86 (at 
> least that is how I read it).  The statement didn't make any real attempt to 
> justify this.  This doesn't really sound right to me and since I'm stuck with 
> x86 for the forseeable future, I'd like to know.

This has been discussed several times on comp.compilers and elsewhere,
e.g. in the thread including <01-01-124@comp.compilers>.

Lots of arguments have been exchanged, but empirical evidence is
missing (and it's a lot of work, and IMO one would need several
cases to draw general conclusions).

> Are there some other, documented VMs that use registers instead of a stack as 
> the primary workspace?

The WAM, the Inferno VM, and the Tao VM come to mind.

- anton