Tracing just-in-time compilation

Program execution
General concepts
Code Translation Compiler Compile time Optimizing compiler Linking Execution Runtime system Executable Interpreter Virtual machine Intermediate representation (IR)
Types of code
Source code Object code Bytecode Machine code Microcode
Compilation strategies
Ahead-of-time (AOT) Just-in-time (JIT) Tracing just-in-time Compile and go system Precompilation Transcompilation Recompilation
Notable runtimes
Android Runtime (ART) BEAM (Erlang) Common Language Runtime (CLR) and Mono CPython and PyPy crt0 (C target-specific initializer) Java virtual machine (JVM) LuaJIT Objective-C and Swift's V8 and Node.js Zend Engine (PHP)
Notable compilers & toolchains
GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) LLVM and Clang MSVC Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC)

Tracing just-in-time compilation is a technique used by virtual machines to optimize the execution of a program at runtime. This is done by recording a linear sequence of frequently executed operations, compiling them to native machine code and executing them. This is opposed to traditional just-in-time (JIT) compilers that work on a per-method basis.