The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 03, 2002
Filed:
Sep. 22, 1998
Nik Shaylor, Newark, CA (US);
Antero K. P. Taivalsaari, Cupertino, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
One embodiment of the present invention provides a method for increasing performance of code executing on a platform-independent virtual machine. The method operates by receiving a request to resolve an entry in a symbol table at run-time, wherein resolving the entry requires multiple lookups into the symbol table. It next determines if the entry has previously been resolved. If so, the system returns a direct pointer to a runtime structure associated with the entry, which was returned during a previous resolution of the entry. If not, the system resolves the entry through multiple lookups into the symbol table to produce a direct pointer to the runtime structure, and replaces the entry with the direct pointer. In a variation on the above embodiment, the symbol table assumes the form of a constant pool within an object-oriented class file defined within the JAVA programming language. The present invention speeds up constant pool resolution substantially without requiring a significant amount of additional space. Therefore, the present invention is especially valuable for embedded JAVA systems or other applications that have strict size limitations.