GIGO: words unreadable aloud

A few more compiler-related projects

A few compiler projects (mostly involving runtime code generation) that I hadn't looked at or heard of before (from a thread on comp.compilers).

Will add details later. Later: added intro paragraphs from each site.

Softwire

SoftWire is a run-time x86 assembler. It can be used as a JIT compiler back-end for scripting languages, or for dynamic code generation of optimized inner loops.

Too bad it's x86-only.
GNU Lightning

GNU lightning is a library that generates assembly language code at run-time; it is very fast, making it ideal for Just-In-Time compilers, and it abstracts over the target CPU, as it exposes to the clients a standardized RISC instruction set inspired by the MIPS and SPARC chips.
This one sounds somewhat promising and portable.
Java stuff at St Andrews
http://www-ppg.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/Languages/ProcessBase/HyperCode/
http://www-ppg.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/Languages/Java/CS-HCS/
http://www-ppg.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/Languages/Java/HCS/
http://www-ppg.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/Languages/Java/DynamicCompilation/
I couldn't quite get a handle on what these four related ones are. The names are pretty horrible (I too strongly hear the word "hype" inside them) and the intro paragraphs are wordy and opaque. The last one is somewhat understandable — it provides an interface to "access the Java compiler dynamically from a running Java program". The other three contain a few too many undefined terms (e.g., hyper-program and ProcessBase) for my tastes. Worse, the current ones are not described on their own, but rather in contrast with other systems. I gather that the Hyper-Code System has at least three forms, HCS, PB-HCS, and CS-HCS, or maybe the PB-HCS is the older one that used to be called simply "HCS"?
Even research needs better marketing than this.

11:59:12 PM comment/