Hi all, John Summerfield wrote:
I expected a PCI card with a Java RM back when IBM was still pushing OS/2. Seems a way cool thing to do. I thought Sun might do it, else some wannabe startup.
This all happened before I joined Sun, so I have no personal knowledge of the project, but you can have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PicoJava http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAJC So, this idea didn't yield a "Java machine" for general purpose computing, though picoJava apparently was used in embedded systems, and MAJC was used in Sun workstation graphics boards. It influenced later multi-core products that address cache stalls by dispatching a different instruction thread. In personal experience: I once owned a Pascal MicroEngine which used a similar approach for UCSD Pascal p-code: The p-code was the native instruction set of the machine rather than interpretively executing p-code as was done on standard processors. The MicroEngine had reliability problems, and was soon outperformed by contemporary conventional processors. A similar machine was the Lilith, created at ETH Zurich, and oriented around Modula-2. I never saw one personally, but I recall reading that it had a very stylish teak wood cabinet! Anyhow, language based processors seem to be a seductive design pattern that hasn't really gained momentum for general purpose computing. Anyone else want to 'fess up to having worked with UCSD Pascal or Modula-2? cheers, Jeff -- Jeff Savit Principal Field Technologist Sun Microsystems, Inc. Phone: 732-537-3451 (x63451) 400 Atrium Drive Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Somerset, NJ 08873 http://blogs.sun.com/jsavit/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
