This post introduces the .NET team's new 64-bit Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler. It was written by Andrew Pardoe, PM Manager for the CLR Runtime PM team.
The world is moving to 64-bit computing even though it isn't always faster or more efficient than 32-bit. A lot of programs run faster on 32-bit than on 64-bit, for a variety of reasons. One example of this is the 64-bit JIT compiler in .NET. It does a great job of making your program run fast, but it's not a fast program itself. All that's about to change: a new, next-generation x64 JIT compiler that compiles code twice as fast is ready to change your impressions of 64-bit .NET code.
Remind me again about 64-bit
It seems like the 32-bit x86 computer has been around since the dawn of time. It's a great computer architecture, but it has one big problem: a 32-bit pointer can only address 4 GB of RAM. 64-bit computers, with their wider pointers, can address practically unlimited amounts of RAM. RAM was relatively expensive when 64-bit Windows was new so 64-bit machines were originally just used as servers. Nowadays 64-bit computing has gone mainstream and computers routinely ship with more than 4 GB of RAM. Even some smartphones have moved to 64 bit, despite the fact that they only have 1 GB of RAM installed.
The .NET 64-bit JIT was originally designed to produce very efficient code throughout the long run of a server process. This differs from the .NET x86 JIT, which was optimized to produce code quickly so that the program starts up fast. Taking time to compile efficient code made sense when 64-bit was primarily for server code. But "server code" today includes web apps that have to start fast. The 64-bit JIT currently in .NET isn't always fast to compile your code, meaning you have to rely on other technologies such as NGen or background JIT to achieve fast program startup.
RyuJIT to the rescue!
RyuWHAT? The .NET Code Generation team has been working on a new, next-generation x64 compiler, codenamed RyuJIT. This new JIT is twice as fast, meaning apps compiled with RyuJIT start up to 30% faster (Time spent in the JIT compiler is only one component of startup time, so the app doesn't start twice as fast just because the JIT is twice as fast.) Moreover, the new JIT still produces great code that runs efficiently throughout the long run of a server process.
This graph compares the compile time ("throughput") ratio of JIT64 to RyuJIT on a variety of code samples. Each line shows the multiple of how much faster RyuJIT is than JIT64, so higher numbers are better.
Read more: .NET Framework Blog
QR: 