An anomaly in an interpreter using GCC source-code-level register allocation
Ting‐Wei Hou, Fuh-Gwo Chen · ACM SIGPLAN Notices · 2007
An anomaly of unexpected performance in an interpreter whose frequently accessed variables are manually assigned to hard registers by GCC source-code-level register allocation is presented. A hard-registered virtual program counter and stack pointer as well as a byte-code translation are experimented on both register-rich PowerPC and register-limited Intel x86. According to the study of the anomaly, a hard register should not be assigned singly to a variable in an interpreter due to higher register pressure.