Oracle International Corporation

Vladimir Ivanov

John Robert Rose

Mikael Vidstedt

In one approach, an import mechanism allows new hardware intrinsics to be utilized by writing or updating a library of source code, rather than specifically modifying the virtual machine for each new intrinsic. Thus, once the architecture is in place to allow the import mechanism to function, the virtual machine itself (e.g. the code which implements the virtual machine) no longer needs to be modified in order to allow new intrinsics to be utilized by end user programmers. Since source code is typically more convenient to write than the language used to implement the virtual machine and the risk of miscoding the virtual machine is minimized when introducing new intrinsics, the import mechanism described herein increases the efficiency at which new hardware intrinsics can be introduced.

Import mechanism for hardware intrinsics

In one approach, a native call is performed using an adapter generator to produce an adapter for converting memory structures between a first memory representation adhering to a first application binary interface (ABI) and a second memory representation adhering to a second memory representation adhering to a second ABI. In some cases, the adapter produced by the adapter generator is stored in an adapter cache and indexed by the shape of the call for later reuse should the same native call be made again in the future. The adapter produced by the adapter generator uses a set of intermediate instructions which can be either compiled by a Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler or interpreted by an interpreter to produce executable instructions for converting between the first ABI and the second ABI.

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Saint Petersburg, Russia

Vladimir Ivanov