Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2006 14:05:12 +0200 (CEST) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> To: freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: extreme mem usage under amd64 arch ? Message-ID: <200604081205.k38C5CWp097205@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <20060408104342.GA720@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org>
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Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> wrote: > On Sat, 2006-Apr-08 12:21:46 +0200, Oliver Fromme wrote: > > > I suspect a python kernel would be painfully slow....... > > > > Certainly. I wasn't implying that Python would be well- > > suited to write an OS kernel in. Unless someone builds > > a processor that executes Python bytecode natively. > > Squeak (a smalltalk dialect) has its kernel written in a subset of > squeak which can be either interpreted or compiled into assembler. > The former maintains the development/testing advantages of an > interpreter and the latter makes it run at a decent speed. You may be > able to do the same with Python. In fact, that's already possible. This is one of the advantages of the Python grammar being relatively simple and well-designed: It's easy to write independent implementations of it. Besides the standard Python implementation (which comes with an interactive interpreter and a bytecode generator) there are several other implementations of the Python language, including compilers such as "Pyrex" that create C code which can be compiled into native binaries (and is easy to interface with other C programs). > Alternatively, JIT techniques have > received an enormous amount of effort over the past decade (thanks to > Java) and a JIT Python may be reasonable. In fact, that's already possible. :-) For example, using "Psyco" (a JIT compiler for Python): http://psyco.sourceforge.net/introduction.html or "Jython" (a Python implementation in Java that creates Java bytecode): http://www.jython.org/docs/whatis.html > > Oliver (right now busy writing a boot manager in assembler) > > Not Python?? :-) Well, that would have been an option if there were no space concerns. That or O'Caml. :-) However, it must be able to run from an ISO9660 sector, using ElTorito "no emulation mode", so it must fit in 2048 bytes. The Python runtime library is a little bit larger than that. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way. "That's what I love about GUIs: They make simple tasks easier, and complex tasks impossible." -- John William Chambless
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