Tail Call Optimization Tailored for Native Stack Utilization in JavaScript Runtimes

JavaScript has significantly evolved, broadening its capabilities. However, the uptake of tail call optimization (TCO) remains limited, largely due to concerns about debugging difficulties and the potential increase in overall complexity. This paper highlights the compelling importance of tail calls...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE access Vol. 12; pp. 111801 - 111817
Main Authors: Park, Hyukwoo, Kim, Seonghyun
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2024
Subjects:
Code optimization
Codes
compiler
Engines
interpreter
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript engine
Memory management
Optimization methods
Program processors
Runtime
tail call optimization
ISSN:2169-3536, 2169-3536
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:JavaScript has significantly evolved, broadening its capabilities. However, the uptake of tail call optimization (TCO) remains limited, largely due to concerns about debugging difficulties and the potential increase in overall complexity. This paper highlights the compelling importance of tail calls within web applications, advocating for TCO as a means to boost performance and enhance memory efficiency. We present an innovative TCO technique that leverages the native stack within JavaScript engines, capitalizing on the native stack's inherent benefits over heap memory. This technique is carefully crafted to comply with diverse TCO standards, prioritizing simplicity and providing debugging features. We tackle the inherent challenges of TCO and successfully deploy our method in a lightweight JavaScript engine. Our approach is rigorously evaluated, proving its effectiveness and practicality. Notably, our implementation facilitates considerable memory savings for web applications, comparable to the maximum Resident Set Size (RSS), and achieves an average performance improvement of approximately 19.8% for algorithms that are heavily recursive. This research not only demonstrates the versatility and efficiency of our TCO strategy but also makes a significant contribution to the wider adoption and comprehension of TCO, thereby improving JavaScript engines' performance and memory management efficiency.
ISSN:2169-3536
2169-3536
DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3441750