🚀 go-pugleaf

goochb@rwi.com (William D. Gooch) wrote:

> dbell@shvn.com (Doug Bell) writes:
> 
> >goochb@rwi.com (William D. Gooch) wrote:
> 
> >> Anyone know how many bits are in a Java machine word?
> 
> >Er...A byte is usually 8-bits.  That's what a bytecode is in this case at 
> least.
> 
> My reference to "Java machine" was about hardware, not the 
> virtual machine.  Bytecoding has little to do with this - issues
> such as handling 32-bit and 64-bit numeric values efficiently are
> more relevant.

Sorry about the misunderstanding.

> Having thought about what Alan said a bit more, I now think that
> Java hardware probably won't do a whole lot for Lisp or Smalltalk,
> because Java is statically typed.  The same reasoning indicates,
> I believe, that the speed improvements to be gained from special-
> purpose Java hardware are not likely to be as significant as those
> that have been seen for Lisp machines.  This will most likely make it 
> harder for Java hardware to compete with conventional hardware 
> than it has been for Lisp machines.

I agree that Java CPUs are unlikely to replace general purpose CPUs for
executing Java.  The successful Java CPUs will probably be used for
embedded applications.  Since JIT Compilers and other native compilation
methods for Java allow Java to make good use of conventional processors, I
doubt that special purpose processors will offer enough of an advantage,
or be able to keep pace technologically.

<snip>
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> William D. Gooch
> RothWell International
> goochb@rwi.com
> Texas liaison for the International Programmers Guild
> For information on IPG, see http://www.ipgnet.com/ipghome.htm
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Doug Bell
dbell@shvn.com