Authors from University of Rennes and Inria, France, experimented with adding Dynamic Binary Modification (DBM) to an Ahead-of-Time (AoT) JavaScript compiler. The new optimization aimed at reducing memory accesses did not result in faster execution times on modern architectures. This challenges the traditional belief that removing instructions or memory reads always speeds up performance. The study suggests that sophisticated compiler optimizations are only beneficial if the processor itself cannot accelerate the code. This finding has implications for the implementation of dynamic languages, highlighting the evolving strategies needed in today’s computing landscape.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.20547