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Cliff Click @ VMSS16: Bits of Advice For the VM Writer

softdevteamuk
Talks
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this talk4 months2017–2021 score 5.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN recommends it, and Cliff Click's talks in general, as practical wisdom from someone who built HotSpot and worked on Azul's VMs.

Cliff Click, author of HotSpot's JIT compiler, shares hard-won advice for people writing virtual machines at the VMSS16 workshop. Topics include interpreters, JITs and performance lessons.

“I strongly recommend following and listening to videos by Cliff Click who wrote HotSpot and worked on Azul and other VMs.” (HN, 2021)

3 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 2 citations · Talks · advanced

6 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@filereaper Mar 2019 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Building Fast Interpreters in Rust
I highly recommend folks to view this talk by the venerable Cliff Click called "Bits of Advice For the VM Writer" [1] Of particular interest are Continuation Style Passing Interpreters [2] and how much of a speedup you can get by going to raw assembly. The talk has lessons Cliff learned from his years on the JVM but those can be adapted easily to other runtimes. [1] [this video] [2] [link]
VM-writing advice on interpreters and speedups from raw assembly
@filereaper Nov 2021 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: Best Books on the JVM?
I strongly recommend following and listening to videos by Cliff Click who wrote HotSpot and worked on Azul and other VMs. Cliff also has Coffee Compiler Club sessions on Fridays. - [link] - [this video]
Talks from the author of HotSpot on VMs
@tjalfi Jun 2021 Recommends
on HN thread Intel to disable TSX by default on more CPUs with new microcode
I'm also a fan of Cliff and other Rice alumni; here are a few of his videos that I like. [0] The Sea of Nodes and the HotSpot JIT [1] A JVM Does That? [2] A Crash Course in Modern Hardware [3] Bits of Advice for the VM Writer [0] [link] [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] [this video]
One of several Cliff Click talks on JIT and VMs

Citations, criticism and jokes

@hyperpape Apr 2017 Cites it
on HN thread On mutex performance and WTF::Lock
He doesn't give a lot of details, but somewhere in the first 20 minutes of this talk (probably 15 minutes in), Cliff Click says that Hotspot had to create fair locks in user-space because kernel provided locks weren't adequate. [this video]
Notes HotSpot built user-space fair locks because kernel locks fell short

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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