I saw the first author of this paper present this work in my building about six months ago. Myself and others were impressed with both their results, and the rigor in their analysis. They experiment on multiple hardware platforms, and even compare against other VMs. In short, this is what good systems research looks like.
Note that the page I linked to has both the full paper and the slides from their conference talk. I should also disclose that I also work for IBM Research, so I may have some bias in liking this paper.
(Copying a comment I made on an older submission; that may be why this poster submitted the older research report.)
Is it me or does anyone here thinks that with the recent progress in static compiled language in user-friendliness, the path of optimizing the ugly parts of dynamic languages outside of the language design itself is a waste of time ?
Note : not saying this research isn't interesting, because it may lead to many different uses. Just about the example chosen itself.
I have used many of the fancy staticly typed languages and still find dynamic languages more productive, and more accessible to a larger range of people.
I haven't felt any improvement in productivity at higher KLOC counts with statically typed languages in my coding. I've also worked at several large companies and have watched teams using both types of languages, and I have not seen more productivity from those using statically typed languages.
More importantly, there is no conclusive empirical evidence either way.
jshen: I feel your pain. I think there's been too much down-voting by the karma bullies on HN lately, and I think that's the number one reason there's been less comments on HN.
Of course, there are folks who will feel that even though there are less comments lately the level of discourse is higher.
Removing-VM-lock-with-HTM has nothing to do with dynamic or static, compiled or not compiled. Many "staic compiled languages" can have global VM lock too.
I saw the first author of this paper present this work in my building about six months ago. Myself and others were impressed with both their results, and the rigor in their analysis. They experiment on multiple hardware platforms, and even compare against other VMs. In short, this is what good systems research looks like.
Note that the page I linked to has both the full paper and the slides from their conference talk. I should also disclose that I also work for IBM Research, so I may have some bias in liking this paper.
(Copying a comment I made on an older submission; that may be why this poster submitted the older research report.)