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<h1>VMKit: a substrate for virtual machines</h1>
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<p>Current MREs are monolithic. Extending them to propose new features or
reusing them to execute new languages is difficult. VMKit is a library
that eases the development of new MREs and the process of experimenting
with new mechanisms inside MREs. VMKit provides the basic components of
MREs: a JIT compiler, a GC, and a thread manager.</p>
<p>VMKit relies on <a href="http://llvm.org">LLVM</a> for compilation and
<a href="http://jikesrvm.org/MMTk">MMTk</a> to manage memory.
Currently, a full Java virtual machine called J3 is distributed with VMKit.
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<h2 id="goals">Features</h2>
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<p>For the end user, VMKit provides:
<ul>
<li>Precise garbage collection.
<li>Just-in-Time and Ahead-of-Time compilation.
<li>Portable on many architectures (x86, x64, ppc32, ppc64, arm).
</ul></p>
<p>For the MRE developer, VMKit provides:
<ul>
<li>Relatively small code base (~ 20k loc per VM)
<li>Infrastructure for virtual machine research and development
</ul></p>
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<h2 id="goals">Current Status</h2>
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<p>VMKit currently has a decent implementation of a JVM called J3. It
executes large projects (e.g. OSGi Felix, Tomcat, Eclipse) and the DaCapo
benchmarks. A R virtual machine is currently under heavy development.</p>
<p>J3 has been tested on Linux/x64, Linux/x86, Linux/ppc32, MacOSX/x64,
MacOSX/x86, MacOSX/ppc32. The JVM may work on ppc64. Support for Windows has
not been investigated.</p>
<p>While this work aims to provide a fully functional JVM, it is still early
work and is under heavy development. Some of the common missing pieces in
vmkit/llvm are:
<ul>
<li>Mixed interpretation/compilation.
<li>Adaptive optimization.
</ul></p>
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<h2>Why?</h2>
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<p>The development of VMKit was started out of a need to factorize virtual
machine development. The JVM and CLI virtual machine have many
similarities, but are too high-level to be the basis of a "universal"
virtual machine. The LLVM IR on the opposite is low-level enough to be
able to execute these VMs. VMKit is a proof of concept implementation
towards that direction.</p>
<p>Paper on the design of VMKit:
<ul>
<li><a href="publications/vmkit.html">VMKit: a Substrate for Managed Runtime Environments</a>
</li>
</ul>
<p>The PhD thesis that initiated VMKit:
<ul>
<li><a href="publications/thesis.html">Nicolas Geoffray's PhD thesis</a>
</li>
</ul>
<p>An introduction to VMKit can be found in the following video lectures:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://llvm.org/devmtg/2009-10/Geoffray_GarbageCollectionVMKit-700kbps.mov">
Presentation of VMKit/MMTk at the 2009 LLVM Developer's Meeting</a>
</li>
<li><a href="http://llvm.org/devmtg/2008-08/Geoffray_VMKitProject_Lo.3gp">
Presentation of VMKit at the 2008 LLVM Developer's Meeting</a>
</li>
</ul>
</p>
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<h2>Current Status</h2>
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<p>VMKit currently has a decent implementation of a JVM. It executes
large projects (e.g. OSGi Felix, Tomcat, Eclipse) and the
<a href="http://dacapobench.org">DaCapo benchmarks</a>.
</p>
<p>The JVM has been tested on Linux/x64, Linux/x86, Linux/ppc32, MacOSX/x64,
MacOSX/x86, MacOSX/ppc32. The JVM may work on ppc64. Support for
Windows has not been investigated.
</p>
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<h2>Get it and get involved!</h2>
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<p>Start by <a href="get_started.html">getting the code, building it, and
playing with it</a>. This will show you the sorts of things we can do
today.</p>
<p>Once you've done that, please consider <a href="get_involved.html">getting
involved in the VMKit community</a>. Currently, VMKit is tightly
integrated into the LLVM community. You can sign up for the LLVM mailing
list to ask and learn about how the project works.</p>
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<h2>VMKit2</h2>
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<p>The project VMKit2, sponsored by Inria and LIP6, a fork of VMKit
project, that was recently integrated back into VMKit project.</p>
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