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Donate arxiv logo > cs > arXiv:2502.20547 [ ] Help | Advanced Search [All fields ] Search arXiv logo Cornell University Logo [ ] GO quick links * Login * Help Pages * About Computer Science > Programming Languages arXiv:2502.20547 (cs) [Submitted on 27 Feb 2025] Title:An Attempt to Catch Up with JIT Compilers: The False Lead of Optimizing Inline Caches Authors:Aurore Poirier (University of Rennes - Inria - CNRS - IRISA, France), Erven Rohou (University of Rennes - Inria - CNRS - IRISA, France), Manuel Serrano (Inria - University of Cote d'Azur, France) View a PDF of the paper titled An Attempt to Catch Up with JIT Compilers: The False Lead of Optimizing Inline Caches, by Aurore Poirier (University of Rennes - Inria - CNRS - IRISA and 5 other authors View PDF Abstract:Context: Just-in-Time (JIT) compilers are able to specialize the code they generate according to a continuous profiling of the running programs. This gives them an advantage when compared to Ahead-of-Time (AoT) compilers that must choose the code to generate once for all. Inquiry: Is it possible to improve the performance of AoT compilers by adding Dynamic Binary Modification (DBM) to the executions? Approach: We added to the Hopc AoT JavaScript compiler a new optimization based on DBM to the inline cache (IC), a classical optimization dynamic languages use to implement object property accesses efficiently. Knowledge: Reducing the number of memory accesses as the new optimization does, does not shorten execution times on contemporary architectures. Grounding: The DBM optimization we have implemented is fully operational on x86_64 architectures. We have conducted several experiments to evaluate its impact on performance and to study the reasons of the lack of acceleration. Importance: The (negative) result we present in this paper sheds new light on the best strategy to be used to implement dynamic languages. It tells that the old days were removing instructions or removing memory reads always yielded to speed up is over. Nowadays, implementing sophisticated compiler optimizations is only worth the effort if the processor is not able by itself to accelerate the code. This result applies to AoT compilers as well as JIT compilers. Subjects: Programming Languages (cs.PL) Cite as: arXiv:2502.20547 [cs.PL] (or arXiv:2502.20547v1 [cs.PL] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2502.20547 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Journal reference: The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, 2025, Vol. 10, Issue 1, Article 6 https://doi.org/10.22152/programming-journal.org/ Related DOI: 2026/10/6 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Aurore Poirier [view email] [via PROGRAMMINGJOURNAL proxy] [v1] Thu, 27 Feb 2025 21:42:49 UTC (1,672 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled An Attempt to Catch Up with JIT Compilers: The False Lead of Optimizing Inline Caches, by Aurore Poirier (University of Rennes - Inria - CNRS - IRISA and 5 other authors * View PDF * Other Formats view license Current browse context: cs.PL < prev | next > new | recent | 2025-02 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations * NASA ADS * Google Scholar * Semantic Scholar a export BibTeX citation Loading... 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