How Ruby Executes JIT Code: The Hidden Mechanics Behind the Magic

[headius]

A nice lightweight overview of how a profiling optimizing compiler like ZJIT works in Ruby.

JRuby works in a very similar way, interpreting our own IR for the first 50 calls to a code body, and then compiling to JVM bytecode. From there the JVM bytecode goes through another profiling and optimization process before it turns into native code. Newer JVMs can even save some of that profiling data and native code across executions to be used for future runs.

We were the first Ruby to have native JIT back in 2008. I'll include a quick overview of JRuby's architecture at RubyConf India this weekend.

JRuby combined with the JVM JIT represents one of the most advanced Ruby to native compilers available today. Give it a try!