research-article

Improved Ahead-of-time Compilation of Stack-based JVM Bytecode on Resource-constrained Devices

Authors:

Chi-Sheng ShihAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), Volume 15, Issue 3

Article No.: 34, Pages 1 - 44

https://doi.org/10.1145/3341170

Published: 13 August 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Many virtual machines exist for sensor nodes with only a few kB RAM and tens- to a few hundred kB Flash memory. They pack an impressive set of features but suffer from a slowdown of one to two orders of magnitude compared to optimised native code, reducing throughput and increasing power consumption.

Compiling bytecode to native code to improve performance has been studied extensively for larger devices, but the restricted resources on sensor nodes mean most modern techniques cannot be applied. Simply replacing bytecode instructions with predefined sequences of native instructions is known to improve performance but produces code several times larger than the optimised C equivalent, limiting the size of programmes that can fit onto a device.

This article identifies the major sources of overhead resulting from this basic approach and presents optimisations to remove most of the remaining performance overhead, and over half the size overhead, reducing them to 67% and 77%, respectively. While this increases the size of the VM, the break-even point at which this fixed cost is compensated for by the smaller code it generates, is well within the range of memory available on a sensor device, allowing us to both improve performance and load more code on a device.

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Cited By

Li ZLei H(2024)Code Clone Detection Based on Bytecode and Twin Neural NetworksApplied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences10.2478/amns-2024-11729:1Online publication date: 22-May-2024
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Li TFang YJian ZXie XLu YWang G(2022)ATOM: Architectural Support and Optimization Mechanism for Smart Contract Fast Update and Execution in Blockchain-Based IoTIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2021.31069429:11(7959-7971)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2021.3106942
Liu HLin GZeng ZLi XWu JLing M(2022)Technology and Application of Electric Energy Meter with Embedded JVM2022 9th International Forum on Electrical Engineering and Automation (IFEEA)10.1109/IFEEA57288.2022.10038201(641-647)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/IFEEA57288.2022.10038201
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Index Terms

Improved Ahead-of-time Compilation of Stack-based JVM Bytecode on Resource-constrained Devices
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Software infrastructure
        Virtual machines

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks Volume 15, Issue 3

August 2019

324 pages

ISSN:1550-4859

EISSN:1550-4867

DOI:10.1145/3335317

Editor:
Yunhao Liu
Tsinghua University, China

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 13 August 2019

Accepted: 01 May 2019

Revised: 01 July 2018

Received: 01 November 2017

Published in TOSN Volume 15, Issue 3

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Intel Corporation, and Delta Electronics
National Taiwan University
Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan

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Cited By

Li ZLei H(2024)Code Clone Detection Based on Bytecode and Twin Neural NetworksApplied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences10.2478/amns-2024-11729:1Online publication date: 22-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2024-1172
Li TFang YJian ZXie XLu YWang G(2022)ATOM: Architectural Support and Optimization Mechanism for Smart Contract Fast Update and Execution in Blockchain-Based IoTIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2021.31069429:11(7959-7971)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2021.3106942
Liu HLin GZeng ZLi XWu JLing M(2022)Technology and Application of Electric Energy Meter with Embedded JVM2022 9th International Forum on Electrical Engineering and Automation (IFEEA)10.1109/IFEEA57288.2022.10038201(641-647)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/IFEEA57288.2022.10038201
周雪(2021)Design and Realization of Mini Programs for Children’s Playfulness English Enlightenment LearningSoftware Engineering and Applications10.12677/SEA.2021.10201510:02(122-137)Online publication date: 2021
https://doi.org/10.12677/SEA.2021.102015
Augello AGaglio SRe GPeri D(2021)Distributed Symbolic Network Quality Assessment for Resource-constrained Devices2021 26th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA )10.1109/ETFA45728.2021.9613584(1-4)Online publication date: 7-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ETFA45728.2021.9613584
Scheidl F(2020)Valent-Blocks: Scalable High-Performance Compilation of WebAssembly Bytecode For Embedded Systems2020 International Conference on Computing, Electronics & Communications Engineering (iCCECE)10.1109/iCCECE49321.2020.9231154(119-124)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/iCCECE49321.2020.9231154

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