Producer-Side Platform-Independent Optimizations and Their Effects on Mobile-Code Performance

Abstract — Portable mobile code is often executed by a host virtual machine using just-in-time compilation. In this context, the compilation time in the host virtual machine is critical. This compilation time would be reduced if optimizations can be performed ahead-of-time before distribution of the mobile code. Unfortunately, the portable nature of mobile code limits aheadof-time optimizations to those that are platform-independent. This work examines the effect of platform-independent optimizations on the performance of mobile code applications. All experiments use the SafeTSA Format, a mobile code format that is based on Static Single Assignment Form (SSA Form). The experiments, which are performed on both the PowerPC and IA32 architectures, indicate that the effects of performing classical machine-independent optimizations are—in fact— quite platform-dependent. Nevertheless, the results indicate that an application of such optimizations can be profitable. I