An Empirical Study of the Code Pitching Mechanism in the .NET Framework

By: David Anthony, Witawas Srisa-an, Michael Leung

Abstract

The .NET Compact Framework achieves fast execution time by compiling methods dynamically instead of using interpretation. While the code cache provides a high-level of reusability, it can also use a large amount of memory. A ``code pitching'' mechanism can be used to deal with this problem. In this paper, we study the effect of code pitching on the overall performance and memory utilization of .NET applications. We profile the access behavior of the compiled methods. We also experiment with various code cache configurations to perform pitching. We find that programs can operate efficiently with a small code cache without incurring substantial recompilation and execution overheads.

Cite as:

David Anthony, Witawas Srisa-an, Michael Leung, “An Empirical Study of the Code Pitching Mechanism in the .NET Framework”, Journal of Object Technology, Volume 5, no. 3 (April 2006), pp. 107-127, doi:10.5381/jot.2006.5.3.a5.