What opcode dispatch strategies are used in efficient interpreters?

Question

What techniques promote efficient opcode dispatch to make a fast interpreter? Are there some techniques that only work well on modern hardware and others that don\'t work we

Answer 1

Just-in-time compilation is one.

Answer 2

One big win is to store the source code in an intermediate form, rather than redoing lexical analysis and parsing during execution.

This can range all the way from just storing the tokens, through Forth style threaded code and on to JIT compilation.