Virtual-Machine Abstraction and Optimization Techniques

Many users and companies alike feel uncomfortable with execution performance of interpreters, often also dismissing their use for specific projects. Specifically virtual machines whose abstraction level is higher than that of the native machine they run on, have performance issues. Several common existing optimization techniques fail to deliver their full potential on such machines. This paper presents an explanation for this situation and provides hints on possible alternative optimization techniques, which could very well provide substantially higher speedups.