I’ve read this article every time it’s gotten posted here and it’s always gone a little over my head. I was able to follow how he used 8 x86_64 registers for the VM’s stack slots and how the VM instructions were implemented. How the padding and alignments of each version of the instructions was calculated is impressive and I can imagine how much of a chore it would be to figure out with a normal assembler.
Using SBCL as a macro-assembler is extremely cool, and then allowing CL code to call into the VM is where it really blows my mind.
Obviously it’s been over a decade since this article was written. For someone less familiar with SBCL internals (or CL in general), would something like AsmJit or Iced be a good way to achieve similar things?
Try pair reading it with a good thinking LLM like GPT 5.5 or Claude Opus. I found it help me a lot.
I have started learning SBCL internal from the beginning of this year with the help of GPT, and I really want to contribute to SBCL compiler someday in future.
SBCL: The Assembly Code Breadboard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39859849 - March 2024 (19 comments)
SBCL: Assembly code breadboard (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28450473 - Sept 2021 (4 comments)
SBCL: The Ultimate Assembly Code Breadboard (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11959147 - June 2016 (2 comments)
SBCL: The Ultimate Assembly Code Breadboard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408807 - March 2014 (75 comments)
Using SBCL as a macro-assembler is extremely cool, and then allowing CL code to call into the VM is where it really blows my mind.
Obviously it’s been over a decade since this article was written. For someone less familiar with SBCL internals (or CL in general), would something like AsmJit or Iced be a good way to achieve similar things?
I have started learning SBCL internal from the beginning of this year with the help of GPT, and I really want to contribute to SBCL compiler someday in future.