"Strong typing vs. strong testing"

[Dave Angel]

On 2:59 PM, Lie Ryan wrote:
> On 10/01/10 23:56, BartC wrote:
>> "Pascal J. Bourguignon"<pjb at informatimago.com>  wrote in message
>> news:87zkuyjawh.fsf at kuiper.lan.informatimago.com...
>>> "BartC"<bc at freeuk.com>  writes:
>>>
>>>> "Pascal J. Bourguignon"<pjb at informatimago.com>  wrote in message
>>>>> When Intel will realize that 99% of its users are running VM
>>>> Which one?
>>> Any implementation of a controlled environment is a virtual machine.
>>> Sometimes it is explicitely defined, such as in clisp, parot or jvm, but
>>> more often it is implicit, such as in sbcl, or worse, developed in an
>>> ad-hoc way in applications (eg. written in C++).
>> But if you had to implement a VM directly in hardware, which one (of the
>> several varieties) would you choose?
> Virtual Machine in Hardware... isn't that a contradiction?
>
>
Intel's processors aren't just hardware, they already have lots of 
microcode, as has nearly every machine  built in the last 40 years or 
so.  However, the hardware is heavily biased towards the "Intel x86 
instruction" architecture.  But there are at least 3 vm's already in the 
Pentium processor:  one emulates the 8086 PC model, real mode,  another 
is 32bit, and the third is 64 bit.

Years ago, somebody microcoded the UCSD p machine, which is probably the 
logical forerunner to the byte code of both the jvm and the Python byte 
code architecture.  The machine was pretty quick, but it wasn't a 
commercial success, perhaps in part because of thermal problems, but 
primarily because it 'wasn't compatible."

DaveA