It is normal for a VM with JIT to run some applications faster than than a compiled application. That’s because a VM with JIT is like a simulator that simulates a virtual computer, and also runs a compiler in realtime. Because both tasks are built into the VM with JIT, the machine simulator can feed … Read more
Why is LLVM Unsuitable for building a JIT? I wrote HLVM, a high-level virtual machine with a rich static type system including value types, tail call elimination, generic printing, C FFI and POSIX threads with support for both static and JIT compilation. In particular, HLVM offers incredible performance for a high-level VM. I even implemented … Read more
A phi node is an instruction used to select a value depending on the predecessor of the current block (Look here to see the full hierarchy – it’s also used as a value, which is one of the classes which it inherits from). Phi nodes are necessary due to the structure of the SSA (static … Read more
WebAssembly support is ever evolving. Right now it is supported by the following languages: C / C++ – has very good (production ready) support via EmScripten, or other minimal LLVM-based toolchains Rust – WebAssembly is an officially supported target, with a highly active community around it. Go – has now supports WebAssembly as an official, … Read more