Bebbo's Virtual Machine

I did start this project since I was unsatisfied with the available Java virtual machines:

Why does even the tiniest program require 7MB memory or even more?
Why are the JVMs so huge?

I also tried some other solutions, e.g. the GNU gcj compiler (available for Windows at http://www.cygwin.com). This works fine unless the HelloWorld.java results in an executable of 2MB size.

If you want to have something done right, you have to do it yourself

The goals to reach are

create executables from Java code
with small size
and adequate performance Since this a bit more than for Saturday afternoon, I defined my first milestone

Milestone 1

define a garbage collector (gc) mechanism
define an exception handling (eh) mechanism
define the native code support
define working assembler code from Java files which fits gc and eh
program the startup code
program the basic Java classes
program the basic native methods (e.g. write to console)
program a Java to assembler converter for most opcodes
compile, assemble and link the HelloWorld

The code

public class HelloWorld {
  public static void main(String args[]) {
    System.out.println("Hello world!");
  }
}

results into an executable of 27.136 bytes. Woot!

Milestone 2

implement a "destack" algorithm which converts the stack orientated generated assembler code into better code
implement more native methods for full file I/O
programm some examples usable as benchmark to compare the speed of the implementations. The current benchmark is available here

program V1 size V1 speed V2 size V2 speed JVM 1.5 speed gcj speed

HelloWorld 27.136 - 26.624 - - -

Test add 30.208 56380 29.184 100512 84484 212273
These results are not bad for the first shot! The peformance is half of gcj with all optimizations, which is much faster than I expected! And the functionality is even good enough for first simple utilities, which requires the gc only at program end.

program	V1 size	V1 speed	V2 size	V2 speed	JVM 1.5 speed	gcj speed
HelloWorld	27.136	-	26.624	-	-	-
Test add	30.208	56380	29.184	100512	84484	212273

Milestone 3

implement more optimizations
complete code generation for all opcodes

 current measurements

UPDATED

Test	BVM speed	JVM 1.5 speed	gcj speed
return 0	230910	98667	224542
add	180219	91480	195843
multiply	149357	89095	197152
add array	117054	73929	127408
loop10000	79	35	88
biginteger multiply	4753	2815	2373
biginteger modulo	3976	3429	4961

With more optimizations the code is coming close to gcj, for more complex code (less possible optimizations) the difference to gcj is even less. The performance is always better than the JVM 1.5 classic mode. This is a good base to add the missing features, but there are still some more possible optimizations.

Milestone 4

added Threads to BVM.
added an implementation synchronized methods and synchronized statement

The implementation is not yet tuned for performance but tuned to be resource friendly. Since every Java object can be used with synchronized the mutex objects are created when necesarry. Let's look forward for some benchmark results. The good news is the small impact on size with all that new stuff. HelloWorld uses now 29.184 bytes.

Future

enable garbage collector
enable exception handler
program a socket implementation
support notify() / notfiyAll()
support dynamic class loading

... stay tuned