Inventory of assets

[Steve Blackburn <St...@anu.edu.au>]

The wealth of ideas that are coming to the table is impressive.

I suggest that we establish some sort of inventory of our "assets" 
(presumably on the wiki).  I think that such a resource will be 
enormously helpful to a project like this one which is trying to bring 
together a huge pool of enthusiasm, prior work and outstanding 
research.  If this project could produce a VM that literally combined 
the best of all of the work at the table, it would be a formidable VM 
indeed.

By "assets", I mean everything from the concrete (donated code), to the 
more abstract (resources such as papers like the one Andy posted to the 
list yesterday).  I think that if we maintain this as we go along, it 
could prove to be a really valuable resource.  To me this is our 
strength---so many different individuals bringing different expertise to 
the project, from code to ideas.  If we can catalog that wealth and 
therefore have it at our collective fingertips, I think the chances of 
this project capitalizing on those ideas and doing really exciting 
things will increase greatly.

I can imagine a tree like structure, with leaves on the tree being 
assets, each one described briefly---if code, then the level of 
availability and license, and perhaps a summary with pointers to more 
info.  If a paper, then a short summary and a pointer, etc etc etc.  For 
example, I think all of the VMs we're aware of should be leaves of a VM 
node in the tree.  The Boehm collector adn MMTk are obvious leaves of 
the VM.GC node.  The paper Andy raised could be added to 
VM.interpreter.  It may in fact be a graph, with, JamVM, for example 
getting a mention under VM.interpreter as well as VM and OVM could be 
under VM and VM.java-in-java, etc etc etc.  In a relatively short period 
of time, this could become a great repository of the state of the art in 
VM design and implementation.

It may then be that the technical FAQ simply becomes a set of references 
to the inventory of ideas.

--Steve

Re: Inventory of assets

["Geir Magnusson Jr." <ge...@apache.org>]

On May 23, 2005, at 9:15 PM, Steve Blackburn wrote:

> The wealth of ideas that are coming to the table is impressive.
>
> I suggest that we establish some sort of inventory of our  
> "assets" (presumably on the wiki).  I think that such a resource  
> will be enormously helpful to a project like this one which is  
> trying to bring together a huge pool of enthusiasm, prior work and  
> outstanding research.  If this project could produce a VM that  
> literally combined the best of all of the work at the table, it  
> would be a formidable VM indeed.
>
> By "assets", I mean everything from the concrete (donated code), to  
> the more abstract (resources such as papers like the one Andy  
> posted to the list yesterday).  I think that if we maintain this as  
> we go along, it could prove to be a really valuable resource.  To  
> me this is our strength---so many different individuals bringing  
> different expertise to the project, from code to ideas.  If we can  
> catalog that wealth and therefore have it at our collective  
> fingertips, I think the chances of this project capitalizing on  
> those ideas and doing really exciting things will increase greatly.
>
> I can imagine a tree like structure, with leaves on the tree being  
> assets, each one described briefly---if code, then the level of  
> availability and license, and perhaps a summary with pointers to  
> more info.  If a paper, then a short summary and a pointer, etc etc  
> etc.  For example, I think all of the VMs we're aware of should be  
> leaves of a VM node in the tree.  The Boehm collector adn MMTk are  
> obvious leaves of the VM.GC node.  The paper Andy raised could be  
> added to VM.interpreter.  It may in fact be a graph, with, JamVM,  
> for example getting a mention under VM.interpreter as well as VM  
> and OVM could be under VM and VM.java-in-java, etc etc etc.  In a  
> relatively short period of time, this could become a great  
> repository of the state of the art in VM design and implementation.
>
> It may then be that the technical FAQ simply becomes a set of  
> references to the inventory of ideas.
>

I thought we were already doing this.

Feel free to reorganize in a way that you see adds value.  Whatever  
way you set will probably be the way we go forward. :)

geir

> --Steve
>
>

-- 
Geir Magnusson Jr                                  +1-203-665-6437
geirm@apache.org