from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
dynamic translation
JIT
just-in-time
<architecture> A {virtual machine} implementation approach,
used to speed up execution of {byte-code} programs. To
execute a program unit such as a {method} or a {function}, the
virtual machine compiles its bytecodes into (hardware) machine
code. The translated code is also placed in a cache, so that
next time that unit's machine code can be executed
immediately, without repeating the translation.
This technique was pioneered by the commercial {Smalltalk}
implementation currently known as {VisualWorks}, in the early
1980s. Currently it is also used by some implementations of
the {Java Virtual Machine} under the name {JIT} (Just In Time
compilation).
[Peter L. Deutsch and Alan Schiffman. "Efficient
Implementation of the Smalltalk-80 System", 11th Annual
Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Jan 1984,
pp. 297-302].
(2002-04-15)