I've been watching the interpreter and JIT compiler competitions a bit in the JavaScript and Lua worlds. I haven't collected much organized data but the impression I'm getting is that tracing JIT's are turning up as the winners: sometimes even beating programs statically compiled with GCC. Is there a growing body of evidence that tracing JIT compilers are the horse to bet on? Will a more static style JIT like Google's V8 be able to keep up?

Thanks,

Peter

[I promoted this item to the front page, since the discussion is highly interesting & informative. -- Ehud]