[Oberon] Updating Slim Binaries

[John Drake]

Hello all,

This list seems far more active than 
comp.lang.oberon for some reason.  Anyway a
project to revive slim binaries would indeed
be interesting.  It would be good to get
Michael Franz in on the project.  As you
may already know he was one of the original
creators of slim binaries.  He's been doing
some interesting work lately with something
he calls "SafeTSA".  (See 
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~franz/ and click on
the "List of Publications)  The TSA stands
for "type safe single static assignment".
This is similair to the GSA technology used
by OOC folks.  But instead of being aimed
at native compilation like OOC, SafeTSA is
still mobile.  This allows for what Dr. Franz
calls "dynamic reoptimization".  In other
words the same types of optimization that
GSA allows, SafeTSA allows, but it's enhanced
by the ability to do these after first 
gathering information about the machine on 
which it's running on, instead of the machine 
on which it's compiled.  (Hmmm...perhaps the
similairity to GSA might get the interest
of the OOC folks?)  But this time instead of 
"kicking against the tide" with Oberon and
Juice Dr. Franz is applying SafeTSA to the
Java VM.

With that information in mind I see a few
ways to proceed.

1) A joint project between ETH and UCI to
integrate SafeTSA into the Active Oberon
compiler.  (Ok, I'm dreaming here.)

2) Build a compiler that outputs JavaVM
code.  Then use SafeTSA to convert this
to optimized native code on the fly.
This isn't as far fetched an idea as it
sounds.  The JOB compiler already creates
JavaVM from O2 code.  And there's already
a JavaVM loader for BlueBottle Oberon.

3) What Patrick has already mentioned, 
namely updating the old Slim Binaries
representation for Active Oberon.

Personally I would vote for option # 2.
That would transform BlueBottle Oberon
from an "interesting project" into a
real contender in the WebServer arena.

Regards,

John M. Drake


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