Node.js on PowerPC

A story about porting Node.js & V8

Just to be clear this is NOT a talk about JavaScript on the JVM - we're talking 
about a real native port of Google's V8 engine

Introduction

Node.js
V8 on PowerPC
Demo

Here is basically what this talk will cover.

I'll be tempting fate with the demo

Java != JavaScript

Java and Javascript are similar like the words Car and Carpet are similar.
Similar syntax to C, but borrows from Python, Perl and others
Available in all modern browsers
Non-blocking, event driven IO capability
JSON - JavaScript Object Notation

Java ➜ JavaScript

Companies moving from Java->JavaScript

Why?  - instead of traditional client (browser) / server in different languages (PHP, Ruby, Java)
that required multiple teams, multiple languages - now with JS available on the server you can 
use the same set of langauge skills across both. Removing the layer (communication with 2 teams)

Developers moving from Java -> JavaScript

Good news - it's relatively easy for Java devs to move to JS

Node.js

What's Node made of?

V8 Engine	libuv	core lib
C++ JS	C platform abstraction layer	JavaScript

Node.js was created by Ryan Dahl
Joyent is the steward of Node.js

Created by Ryan Dahl
"Owned" by Joyent

Current most popular JS on server solution

-> bits it's built out of

A few good examples of when Node.js is a good fit
- Single page gmail-like applications
-  Creating services with JSON API
- Streaming data

http://npmjs.org

npm inc. (joke about mug)
-> possibly more important than node
npm is a command line utility for interacting with the public registry hosted at npmjs.org	

What npm does:
- Manages dependencies for an application
- Can install, remove and libraries
- Can invoke and run Applications

Example:

$ npm install orion     
$ npm start orion

simply having modules is a big win for any language.
There are efforts in ecmascript 6 to introduce modules into browser based JS 

Here's an example of using npm to install and run orion

Having lots of JS modules is useful, but calling the OS is when real work happens
npm modules can also include native source code

-> native bits
-> GYP / compatibility

If you're a Node developer, there are LOTS of options to host your project cheap, or even free

openshift, heroku, appfog, azure, joyent, nodejitsu, modulus, cloudnode,
IBM bluemix, cloud foundry, 

aws (self managed) / google compute engine  (self managed)

Awesomesauce!

let's use it for everything!

It's new, it's cool, everyone is moving to it, I can host it cheap.. 

-> oh wait, it's not available on my platform? (now bear with me..)

PowerPC - who cares?

I work for IBM, and it should be obvious IBM cares about PowerPC (AIX, Linux)

OpenPOWER consortium - possibility of data centers?

Of course there is the slightly retro PPC hardware: G4, G5

Some claim to have never used a PowerPC chip - but many have played games on PS3/XBox360/Wii

Embedded (mostly via freescale)

So - last year, that's what I went off to do - bring Node/V8 to PowerPC
	
	(maybe a series of images that slide in and out? - on keypress)

Was it hard to port?

Node.js - No, not really.
V8 - Yes. Very.

Why? V8 always compiles JS to machine code.

Was it hard to port.. 

So we clearly had a motivation - support the PowerPC platform for this new cool runtime.

I started this work late in 2012 - and worked through 2013 to build out a native port
a lot of the work was a team of one (me)

50,510

V8 already supported multiple platforms: ia32, x64, arm, and mips
The average number of lines of code in each platform specific directory: 50k

mind blown, so what do you do with this much code?
There had been previous attempts to port.. but it's hard

Why? You need to know about..
- runtimes (garbage collection - objects move!)
- multiple assembly languages
- able to read lots of code since that's the primary documentation

Eat the whale?

	-> sure we could try to eat the whale.. (one bite at a time) BUT
	CHEAT: simulation, then turn off features
	eat the much smaller whale - keep cheating!
	
	it turns out V8 has a simulation mode.. so we can cheat some more
	the 1st thing I did was port the simulator to PPC this let me
	flush out endian issues AND find out what code didn't need porting
	
	image: http://openclipart.org/detail/120/whale-by-peterm

Demo endian

0 result => big endian
1 reslut => little endian

Community

Using V8

Aside from Node.js, V8 itself has
become an important result.

MongoDB
therubyracer (Ruby gem)
libv8 (Ubuntu)

When I started on the project, V8 was clearly the leader in JavaScript runtimes making it
the logical choice to port - the license also made it suitable for commercial use.
The fact that Node.js was the dominant server side JS environment helped confirm that choice.
Once we got going, porting V8 became about making Node.js run (first at all, then well) on the
PowerPC platform.
Now that we have a fully functional Node.js on PowerPC, we're starting to discover that v8 on its
own is a very useful bit of technology. It is used by: MongoDB, the ruby racer, and libv8. All of
these projects have their own reasons to exist and are being brought to Linux on PowerPC.

What's next?

Node.js 0.12.x

Port to zSeries (S390) platform runing zLinux

GitHub andrewlow/v8z

Contribution back to master V8 and Node.js repositories

Standard Disclaimer: This is not a product annoucement, nor a commitment.

staying current

s390.. yup, we're doing it again.

making sure we get our code back into the master code (hoops to jump through)

Questions?

Andrew Low

roo@ca.ibm.com

twitter @andrew_low

github.com/andrewlow

Node.js on PowerPC

A story about porting Node.js & V8

Introduction

Node.js

V8 on PowerPC

Demo

Java != JavaScript

Java ➜ JavaScript

Node.js

Awesomesauce!

PowerPC - who cares?

Was it hard to port?

50,510

Eat the whale?

Demo endian

Community

Using V8

What's next?

Questions?