Perhaps you can take some ideas from Smalltalk VM.
Some are very fast (only a 4:1 ratio over optimised C++).
See the tread "Integer micro-benchmarks" on comp.lang.smalltalk

Some reference:

http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/smalltalk/bluebook/bluebook_imp_toc.html
(an old implementation of Smalltalk-80)

http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/squeak/oopsla_squeak.html
(the story of a recent implementation of Smalltalk)

See also: www.squeak.org
Squeak is an open source implementation of Smalltalk with a decent VM
written in Smalltalk then translated in C the compiled for a lot of
platform.
The Smalltak paradigm are near from functional programing.

Have a nice day.
Alain


"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> a �crit dans le message news:
HtiF6.5582$Tv2.757613@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> Hi,
>     Someone on these news groups suggested to someone that in order to
make a
> reliable Virtual Machines, they needed the opinions of many programmers in
many
> languages.  {Can't remember who, some of those threads get huge and i get
lost!
> Good idea who ever it was!}
>
> I'm involved in a project to develop a VM and i was looking for peoples
thoughts
> on this.  I've started with a simple RISC machine that's not finished yet.
I
> will complete this soon, but i've been thinking my approach is flawed.
Not to
> say RISC is bad, but maybe it's too simplistic or lacks specific support
for
> features that'd make it A:more efficient and B:easier to program.
>
>
> The language project will support the following imperative features:
>
> -    For/While loops
> -    Procedures
> -    side effect enabled programming (variables)
> -    "tidy" pointers
> -    modes for parameters (only for procedures, functions nonmodified
params)
> -    Generitcity (polymorphism)
>
>
> and the following functional features
>
> -    pattern matching
> -    side effect free programming (values)
> -    higher order functions
> -    guards
> -    Algebraic types
> -    N-Tuples
> -    Genericity (polymorphisism)
>
> and the following "not sure" or "in many paradigms" features
>
> -    Units bound to values/variables
> -    Lists                         []
> -    Arrays                        <>
> -    Records
> -    Sets (and Records as Sets)    {}
> -    Enumeration types (with extensiblity and subtyping)
> -    Subtyping
> -    Relational programming (some paper i really liked described it,
prologish
>      but somewhat different)
>
>
> This list is quite exhaustive and i know it doesn't look that nice now,
but the
> work i've done so far seems to indicate this is all possible and looks
nice too.
> The major stumbling block is state->stateless programming but i'm looking
and
> trying ideas out.  Something will be done; whether or not it's pretty is
another
> matter.
>
> I know many folks get annoyed when they here about "yet another new
language"
> but this is not about the language itself.  It is about me learning about
all
> this stuff and seeing what i can do with a big collection of (sometimes
> unrelated) issues and see what can come of it.
>
> The real problem is the VM, so i'm looking for peoples thoughts on this.
What
> concepts would you have found useful, and what you'd rule out.
>
> Please feel free to ignore this if you don't want to contribute (i know
you will
> anyway).
>
>
> Regards,
> Chris
>
>