function dispatch

[Suresh Jagannathan]

I've read the paper as well, and agree that they've got some
good results.  Although, if I remember correctly much of their
work draws from Deutsch's early work on the Smalltalk compiler
(circa 1984) where they also did predictive dispatch rather 
than indirect virtual call.  That work also involved some 
form of binary  search rather than straight dispatch.

I think Chambers and his crowd would also argue
that class hierarchy analysis also yields results similar to
defunctionalization.  The Self compiler also does aggressive
based on the CHA.

      -- Suresh