Quicktalk: A Smalltalk-80 Dialect for Defining Primitive Methods

Abstract

QUICKTALK is a dialect of Smalltalk-80 that can be compiled directly into native machine code, instead of virtual machine bytecodes. The dialect includes “hints” on the class of method arguments, instance variables, and class variables. We designed the dialect to describe primitive Smalltalk methods. QUICKTALK achieves improved performance over bytecodes by eliminating the interpreter loop on bytecode execution, by reducing the number of message send/returns via binding some target methods at compilation, and by eliminating redundant class checking. We identify changes to the Smalltalk-80 system and compiler to support the dialect, and give performance measurements.