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Tamarin Implications

DIGG IT!     2 Comments Published Tuesday, November 07, 2006 at 7:47 PM .

What is Tamarin?
Adobe and Mozilla announced that Adobe will contribute source code from the latest Adobe ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2), the standards-based scripting language engine in Adobe Flash Player 9, to a new open source project known as Tamarin that will be hosted by the Mozilla Foundation.

What is Adobe ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2)?
Here is a diagram of AVM2 which explains things at a high level. JIT, GC, Verifier, Type System, Memory Manager. Fun for the whole family!



The implications for Flash Player are pretty great:

1. Flash Player is professional? AVM2 has been very hidden in non-Adobe developer circles and understanding AVM2 makes the Flash Player instantly professional. With Tamarin the rest of the world just realized Flash Player 9 is professional grade.

2. Flash Player has a JIT? Again another secret revealed to the rest of the known universe. Few actually believe that Flash Player generates native X86, PPC processor instructions within the JIT compiler. When I say this during presentations, I get stares of disbelief and then a flood of questions. Yes, Flash Player 9 has a JIT compiler.

3. Open - Flash Player AVM2 will get better and more standardized. We will see alignment with ActionScript and JavaScript 2 at a level that has not been possible before. Flash Player 10 and beyond will simply inherit from Tamarin as great developers from around the world explore and enhance.

4. ECMA 4 Everywhere - I believe the Tamarin project will result in many unexpected uses of the virtual machine. When projects are open sourced like this, they go in wildly unpredictable directions. I can imagine that Tamarin will result in ECMA 4 on the server side (Mod-ECMA4 for Apache) and wide use within 3rd party software products for extensibility.

Tamarin means that Flash Player will get better, standardized, and faster.

Tamarin means that JavaScript 2 in FireFox will be available sooner and will be much faster (JIT) with lower memory consumption.

Cheers,

Ted :)

---

Where to find me:

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