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Dynamic

In the native execution mode, Joeq supports dynamic recompilation based on profile information. Joeq includes two profilers. The first is a sampling profiler, which collects information about the time-consuming methods by periodically sampling the call stacks of the running threads. The sampling profiler supports the collection of context-sensitive sampling information through the use of a partial calling context tree[24]. The sampling profiler is integrated into the thread scheduler, which is described in the next section. The sampling profiler is useful because it is easy to adjust the trade-off between overhead and accuracy by varying the sampling rate.

Joeq also includes an instrumentation-based profiler, which interfaces with the compiler. This profiler operates by inserting instrumentation code into the compiled code; every time the code executes, the instrumentation can record an event. This provides more precise information than the sampling profiler at the expense of generally higher profile overhead and more difficult control. Instrumentation code can be disabled through the use of code patching.

Data from both profilers can be output into files, which can be loaded on subsequent runs or by the static compiler. The profile information is also used by various compiler optimizations to improve their effectiveness, for example, inlining frequently-executed call sites or moving computation off of the common paths[25].

Joeq also includes interfaces for a online compilation controller to control dynamic recompilation based on profile information. The controller implementation is still work-in-progress.


next up previous
Next: Run-time Support Up: Joeq: A Virtual Machine Previous: Memory manager
John Whaley 2003-03-15