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?

Related. Others?

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)