How distributed mobile computing resembles a JIT compiler

The Just In Time (JIT) compiler used in the Java Virtual Machines (JVM) is the tool responsible to compile Java bytecode into native platform code, thus granting the application improved execution speed on certain operations.





How can this be comparable to distributed mobile computing? Like I stated in previous posts, I intend to be able to migrate code that is currently being executed into other machines, and resume it's execution there. Let's analyze what this means from the client application's point of view:

1. The client is viewing a page that accesses a procedure that is currently being executed on the server. Thus it calls it with a call (possibly an asynchronous one) to the server, and sets a callback function to receive the server answer;
2. The server opts to send that computation to the client, so it does so (let's assume for now that it uses a Termite-like approach to do so);
3. The client has now the task of storing the received computation is some JavaScript callable form, so that it can call it directly instead of using the RPC and callback he used before.

To do this, he changes the way he calls a given functionality. Which is pretty much the same thing the JIT compiler does. The JVM stores a couple of Virtual Tables (V-Tables) with the addresses of every functions. In the first, it stores pointers to the source code, while the second stores pointers to byte-compiled functions. The first times the code is called, the JVM uses the first V-Table, but calls the JIT to make the compilation and fill in the address in the second V-Table. This way, subsequent calls to the functions will be directed to the byte-compiled file, directly, in a transparent way for the application code.



This can be used as an inspiration for code mobility: Both the client and the server may store tables for each procedure that may be subject to migration, associated with the local address or the particular remote call mechanism, along with a flag that states which method is used currently. The problem still is what information is relevant for each function execution. This single table would suffice if we wanted static code migration. But if we want to migrate running code, we have to consider every function that can be used within the running code.



This topic is still fresh, and I will have to do some experimentations before I can have a more conclusive opinion. But I have a good feeling about this mechanism when associated with a Termite-like code migration technique!