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========================================================================
                                  PyPy
========================================================================

Automatic generation of VMs for dynamic languages - JIT included
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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   <br>
   <center>
   <table border=0>
   <tr><td>Samuele Pedroni</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
       <td>Laura Creighton</td></tr>
   <tr><td>Armin Rigo</td><td></td>
       <td>Jacob Hallén</td></tr>
   </table>
   <a href="http://codespeak.net/pypy/">http://codespeak.net/pypy/</a>
   </center>


PyPy
==================

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**PyPy is a tool-chain for constructing dynamic languages.**

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Interpreters
==================

...are good to implement dynamic languages:

* Easy to write

* Portable

* Flexible and easy to evolve, if written in high-level language
  (without low-level details)

The PyPy Project
==================

We built enough infrastructure such that:

* speed is regained

* features requiring low-level manipulations are (re-)added as *aspects*

* interpreters are kept simple and uncluttered

Targets as different as C and the industry OO VMs (JVM, CLR) are supported.

PyPy as a project
===================

We operate both as an open source with production usage aspirations and
research project.

We focus on the whole system.

We want the tool-chain itself to be as simple as possible
(but not simpler).

Some of what we do is relatively straight-forward, some is challenging
(generating dynamic compilers!).

The Origin of PyPy
=====================

PyPy is a reaction to the frustrations, resource problems and
duplicated efforts of how mainstream open-source languages (like
Python) are implemented now.


Folk Wisdom
====================================================

...about interpreters for Dynamic Languages:

* There are unavoidable tradeoffs between flexibility, maintainability,
  and speed

* Fast, Maintainable, Flexible -- pick one

What this means in Practice
===========================

Current popular open source dynamic language implementations:

* are relatively slow

* are not very flexible

* are harder to maintain than we would like them to be

Not very flexible
=================

- Low-level decisions permeate the entire code base.
- Not ideal to experiment - cannot simply plug-in a new garbage collector,
  memory model, or threading model
- Early decisions come back to haunt you.

Hard to maintain
================

because they are traditionally written in low-level languages:

- the community generates experts in the dynamic language but
  requires experts in C or C++ for its own maintenance
- every time a new VM is needed, the language's community forks
  (CPython - Jython - IronPython)


PyPy Approach
=============================

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Translation
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Going from interpreters to VMs
------------------------------

In PyPy interpreters are written in RPython:

* A subset of Python amenable to static analysis

* Still fully garbage collected

* Rich built-in types

RPython is still close to Python.

A special aspect
==================================

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**Generating JIT compilers**

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JIT motivation
==================================

Flexibility vs. Performance:

* Interpreters are easy to write and evolve

* For high performance, dynamic compilation is required

Traditional JIT compilers
===============================

* Huge resource investment
* The richer the semantics, the harder to write
* Poor encoding of language semantics
* Hard to evolve

Need for novel approaches!

PyPy Approach: Goal
=============================

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Language-agnostic
====================

* The dynamic generation process and primitives are language-agnostic.

* The language implementations should be able to evolve up to
  maintaining the hints.

* By construction all interpreter/language features are supported

pypy-c-jit
======================

.. where to put this? 

PyPy 1.0 contains both the dynamic compiler generator and the start of
its application to PyPy's Python intepreter.

* included are backends for IA32 and PPC
* integer arithmetic operations are optimized
* for these, we are in the speed range of ``gcc -O0``
* demo (63x faster than CPython)

.. demo f1