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Java On 8-bit Platforms
ScrotalDwarf writes: "
OneEighty software has released the world's first 8-bit Java VM. A fully functional Java VM, kilobytes rather than megabytes, in size! It's aimed at the mobile markets, but being smaller it's a whole lot faster - a fast Solaris JVM implementation!? If that wasn't enough, it's actually based on an implementation of a Turing machine.
"
So many mobile devices are at least 32 bit, nevermind 16 or 8. This seems like a wasted effort - an effort that could have gone to better things.
Speaking of which, do 8 bit machines actually have enough memory and speed to handle Java code? It's not exactly the fastest code in the world...
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Seriously, this may not be the most important article on Slashdot, but it is an important advancement. Being able to have Java on your cell phone actually serves some purpose (as opposed to a few other things cell phone makers have come up with). It allows just about anyone to put whatever they want onto their cell phone at little / no cost. The downside: M$ starts making cell phone programs and your phone crashes in the middle of a conversation (it doesn't disconnect, it doesn't drop the signal, it gives you the LCD screen of death).
OTOH, what's the point behind the Turing machine basis?
It's all about the Karma Points, baybee...
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java never had the limitations of C/C++ and other languages with bit precision on the int/long/floats. java has arbitrary precision which is processor independant anyway (BigInteger/Decimal can be arbitrary bits) so this is just another VM port. nothing to write home about. sun's embedded java/picojava is equally small (or supposed to be).
Finally java comes to my NES and Sega Master System! Now I can .... do nothing more than I previously could.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
That I can run java on my 286 now? As well as my atari? What about my new portable atari 2600 I just made? I wonder if it supports WAP...
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
Breakthrough Brings Java(TM) Capabilities to Eight-Bit Platforms
Since when running something on an 8-bit platform a breakthrough?
I can't believe this, since every single modern, useful chip has at least 16 bit words! Come on, who's going to run Java on an 8051 processor or technological equivalent?
I once thought the word breakthrough meant an advance into the future...
Flavio
including "intelligent" pens, lighting, telephones and vehicle monitoring devices.
And PAPER CLIPS!!! NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How much longer must these demons haunt us?
Flavio
The referenced paper is a little slim on actual technical content. It appears that what they're proposing is in effect an extensible bytecode (what they refer to as "adding new procedures"). This would not in itself be novel---it's one of the guiding principles behind Forth, which is one of the reasons Forth is still used for resource-constrained portable coding. There does seem to be provision for stuffing all those new bytecodes into a single namespace.
Not surprising, but it will be encouraging if they succeed in getting a fully functional system in a truly small footprint. More power to them. But it'd be nice to see more detail on what their tools are _really_ doing.
-Jan
While the creation of an 8-bit JVM is pretty cool, stay away from the von Neumann/Turing white paper listed on the site. It is the stupidest thing I have ever read. They say that part of their revolutionary new architecture is none other than...a software stack. They also imply that operating systems do not use stacks, but their architecture or "resuable modules" does. Hmmm...last time I looked this was Java. Last time I looked code being executed used stacks to keep track of where they were.
The biggest pain in the ass for website developers is the fact that no webpage looks the same on all browsers. Imagine if you could provide a type of core, using JINI or JMI with it, so that the user sees the same java front end no matter what the machine's specs are. Then using JINI/JMI, you could place the difficult, number crunching part of the software on another machine back at your place. And the fact that all of this is write once, run [almost] anywhere just make the whole package deal ooze sexiness.
Time to dig out those old cheap 8-bit processors and overclock the hell out of them.
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
The press release also makes some extremely dubious claims about "a novel architectural approach that allows the creation of extremely compact software, often many times smaller than that built using traditional coding techniques." Uh-huh. It's magic!
The 180sw web site says that this is the first 8-bit Java VM. That's definitely not true -- TinyVM for Lego Mindstorms has been around for quite a long time, and I doubt that's even the first. This "GENEVA" thing may be more complete, but that's a different issue.
--
Okay maybe a little bit: have you ever designed a Turing machine from scratch to do something as simple as multiply two numbers? It's incredibly tedious. There's a reason we invented more complicated instruction sets, and then higher-level languages.
--
Although you have skipped several systems... Game Gear and Game Boy being the most noticable, though it's my understanding that the Game Gear was really nothing more than a Master System in a smaller package--hence most SMS emulators also capable of running Game Gear ROMS. I'm pretty sure that Game Boy is fairly different from the NES, though.
Also, what about those great TI calcs? Aren't they 8-bit? IIRC, the ones that are graphing but not the 89, 92, or 92+ are running on a Z80. Considering everything that those wonderful machines have had coded for them (my 86 has Zelda, Lemmings, Mario, Tetris, and various other things on it right now), it would just be a matter of time until we could be running all of those wonderful java games during math class.
Yes, I'm joking, obviously... but if someone were to do this, you can bet that I'd be one of the first to check it out and fiddle with it. It'd be YAIODIBYC - Yet Another Instance Of Doing It Because You Can.
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
The referenced whitepaper is kind of a POS. They claim that with 26 kilobytes of operating system, it's possible to implement any solution. That's fine, but where are the drivers for the video card going to come from? Where is the sound going to come from? Where will the drivers for my funky backup drive reside? They will all have to be tacked on to those 26 kilobytes of memory allocation and printing to the screen, and the result is going to be a system just as large as anything else out there, once you add all the actually useful stuff. Besides, Java is only useful when it has some windowing libraries and the like, those still need to be built for each cel phone or whatever device that the stuff will go on. I don't think that something can really be touted as a Java implementation unless a large majority of the libs (javax.swing.*, etc) also exist. If you can't run StarOffice on your cel phone, what good is it?
-S
I'm not sure exactly what they're claiming but the TINI board has run java on an 8 bit processor for some time.
Before long, the paper clips will take on the task of organizing all of those toasters running Linux into a formidable army. I'd bet that they take on the people who eat Pop-Tarts and bagels cold first... it's people like that that are driving toasters to oblivion.
Viva la revolucion!
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
Turing completeness is not a lofty goal for an instruction/programming system. You'll find Turing completeness in the strangest places - theoretically I can produce any computable result with TeX macros.
Another contender for "first 8-bit Java VM" is Dallas Semiconductor's collection of embedded Java devices at www.ibutton.com.
There's some neat stuff, like the "tini" board - a small (68-pin SIMM form-factor) embedded computer with 10BaseT ethernet and TCP/IP networking. It can run a web server, as well as Telnet and FTP. It also has a couple of serial ports for interfacing to other components.
Maybe it is time for the C=64 to be made again, with a customized Java virtual machine, to serve as the basis from Internet terminals to PDAs?
In general, it takes more bits of memory to implement a function on a Universal Turing Machine than on a conventional microprocessor. The point of the UTM wasn't that it was efficient, it was that it was a very simply machine that could compute anything that is computable. But not necessarily very quickly.
I hope the managers of the funds my 401k is invested in don't invest in companies like this; do they have experts to evaluate high-tech startups?
...I can finally get Java running on my NES?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
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Because they are facing backwards, 180 degrees in the wrong direction.
I am a bad speler. Please ignore speling meestakes in me poast.
Lately it seems like people complain about how impractical certain achievements posted on Slashdot are. I was under the impression that in the eyes of fellow geeks, hacks stand on their own merit - being judged on how clever they are and nothing else. When did all this concern about how useful or practical an accomplishment is factor into the equation about whether it deserves recognition? (ex. a Slashdot article). Java on 8 bit machines is an extremely cool hack - inter-geek approval where it is merrited - if they want to try and make a living off this hack, that's their business (and their investors' I suppose).
The Church-Turing Thesis is the preposition that any discrete function can be solved by symbolic manipulation. A Turing Machine is defined as a device which can solve a computable function by means of symbolic manipulation (like 1s and 0s, for example). (A Universal Turing Machine is a machine that can emulate any Turing Machine, and can therefore solve any discrete function.)
Basically, this means every computer that operates by rules of logic (AND, OR, NOT, etc, as opposed to chaotic or fuzzy systems) is a Turing Machine. Your desktop PC, your Nokia, your calculator watch, your Chinese water clock, are all examples of Turing Machines.
Personally, I'd be far more amazed by a JVM that was implemented by a device that was not a Turing Machine.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Java runs slow enough on 16 and 32 bit. I know there is fuctionality here, but how much can you can when you slow it down. Besides, shouldn't they be focusing on the soon to be released 64-bit platforms. I know intel is working hard on this and AMD is right behind.
Offtopic!!! Wtf! It was a joke! the current temperature in hell As in Hell just froze over, you ignorant fucks!
The Z80 was backwards compatable with the 8080 but added lots of new toys like indexed addressing inprovements interrupt handling, automatic refreshing of DRAM, a 16-bit I/O address space (8080 had the 256 line I/O space seperate from the normal 16-bit memory), memory block copy post increment and repeat in a single instuction. A spare set of registers for fast context switching. Bit set, reset and test.
I wonder this new VM would fit on a ZX spectrum, the £100 Z80 computer from the 1980s?
I guess he had problems convincing people to program in Forth, because now he has a Java front end.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
Furthermore, Turing machines are extremely unpractical computing devices. They are not allowed to have any kind of I/O during computation. All input must reside on the tape at input, and any output must be written to tape before termination. I think such a view of computing would be one of the most useless things ever to use in embedded computing where side-effects is usually all that matters.
Now, there are ways around these limitation, such as using more than one tape which can often reduce a Turing machine design dramatically. But these reductions are usually only conceptually. If you take the time to write up all the state-transitions and so on in one large table as you eventually will have to, if you are to implement it in software, it doesn't really matter. There is also the concept of an Oracle Turing Machine, where you could have special states, and if the machine decided to enter one of those states, magic would happen, and the tape would suddenly be changed in accordance with the procedure associated with that state (e.g, a special state for multiplication of two 32-bit numbers). It could also be used as a way to fake polling I/O. But it still would be nowhere as convenient or practical as just doing normal assembly programming.
I'm not sure what they are trying to get us to believe here. Ok, they've made a small Java VM (only 5 times bigger than TinyVM). They do, however also claim to have revolutionized computing by reinventing the Turing Machine. Given the lack of technical details on exactly what this means, it's impossible to know whether it is correct. But, considering the alternative of a hoax, marketing madness, or some other unknown reason for them to mislead us, I find it hard to believe that it can be true.
Good grief! That means that you could implement this in my favorite language Brainfuck. []!
If you have an AMEX "Blue" card, then you have a JVM in your pocket (I believe its an Hitachi H8, but one of the tiny 8 bit versions).
About half of all smartcards made right now (including almost all from European giant GemPlus) run JVMs.
Anyone who went to Sun's JavaOne show a couple of years ago was handed a rather chunky ring, which had a Dallas Semiconductor iButton on it - this too has a JVM (I actually wrote some code for mine - using the same toolchain as for regular desktop java). I believe it is an 8051 microcontroller.
I just received a TINI board from Dallas, which is the same as the iButton, but in a DIMM form-factor. It's sooooo cool. Info about it is here
Maybe someone should code a 4-bit JVM, so we can run it on Voyager 2 (which has two 4-bit processors) - how's that for mobile code!
I'm not an expert, but I believe there are also real-world computers (at least theoretical ones) that are more powerful than a Turing machine, e.g. quantum computers.
Find free books.
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
It's turning into a damn police state, Sam!
Heh, that's the greatest comic ever, still makes me laugh.
-Dan the drunk
--- Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
Oh yeah, their software runs faster if nobody knows how it works or is allowed to observe it. Sounds like some kind of quantum computer, huh? More like an investor scam.
Looks to me like the old codger in charge is trying to exploit the good name of Alan Turing, his former co-worker. So where was he when Mr. Turing was on trial and needed a character witness to testify about his outstanding contributions to computer science and the defeat of Adolf Hitler?
(It's so rare I get the chance to use a legitimate ad swasticum attack.)
After that pedantic lecture on Turing machines, this vaguely reassuring "theoretical" answer does not impress me. The lack of speed may not seem "problematic" to an academic who doesn't know anything specific about game programming. But how about answering a more specific question: "For the practical programming of even simple computer games, is ORIGIN any better than Java, which totally sucks ass?"-Don
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BigInteger has nothing to do with the Java language. It's just a regular old class written in Java that stores its magnitude as a big-endian array of those 32 bit ints. If it didn't already exist in the API you could write it yourself. If you download the API source and used BitInteger as a reference, you could probably write the same thing in C/C++ in under an hour. Or you could use one of the many existing aribitrary precision C math libraries in the world.
Okay, so it's an 8-bit Turing complete machine. Many text editors, such as VI are complete but you ain't gonna see me playing Quake on them...
Yeah, it's nice for Java, after all, the more machines a VM can run on, the better for it. Unfortunately, the white paper reads more like marketing spiel rather than anything else.
If he had a point to make at all, it's that too many programmers don't write code with a view to reusability in mind. Now that is something worth reminding us...
Amazed at how many posts have been moderated 0 in this topic...
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
So what if the folks at one80 have a flawed understanding of a turing machine. So what if one80 is using FORTH to get it done. Their claim is that they have a full 1.2 compliant, not just personal java, implementation that is tiny. Pretty cool.
err i just thought of a way to find out the way to travel faster than light. it's completely impractical but in theory it would work. does that make me really clever? not really. damn.
Does this mean that java is closer to being used for small embeded systems? Like I thought it was designed for? ... maybe we can now have several small 8 bit chips be the java interpreters. I imagine we could fit a ton of these on a pci card and do massive parallel stuff, or... we could use the proc in the box and run much much faster.
I am suprised that this hasn't happened yet! Who knows
I guess I see the worth of the project, but I doubt that it will be usefull for more than just an * marked next to the platforms that java can run on.
Or maybe all of this is the White Castle talking...
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Wow maybe they can "backport" this to my 32 bit machine, so I can finally run java faster than paint drys....
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
There is not a single digital computer in existence that is as computationally powerful as a turing machine. That's because all real digital computers are Deterministic Finite State Automata (D-FSA). A Turing Machine (TM) has an infinite tape, and it is this infinite storage capacity that allows it to compute things that no computer with a finite amount of storage can compute. An FSA (of both the deterministic and non-deterministic variety) can only *approximate* a TM, by using its finite storage to emulate an infinite tape for practical-sized problems.
Although the white paper cites FORTH, it fails to demonstrate any substantative difference between its architecture and that of FORTH. Granted, my knowledge of FORTH is a little hazy, but this seems awfully similar (in fact, interpretive Java VM's are stack machines as well.)
;-}.
My understanding of how FORTH works is that each opcode is a reference to a subroutine. All subroutines implicitly read their input off the stack and leave their output on the stack. I think even conditional execution is handled in this way. There is no real difference between system routines and "user" routines, and traps to the underlying architecture are just a specific instruction that takes the jump address off the stack.
FORTH code could be extremely compact, because the source and destination of operands and results were implicit and did not have to be coded in the instruction. A FORTH interpreter could also be very compact because the underlying architecture is very simple. A friend of mine once (late '70s) implemented a data logger in 2K of ROM by writing a FORTH interpreter that took about 30 bytes and implementing the rest in FORTH. This was done on a COSMAC (used an 1802 processor - the machine with the SEX instruction).
Java VM's (I think) are a stack machine also, and java bytecode is quite compact for much the same reason FORTH is. Users of swing may not believe this but that's a different rant
Turing machines had random access storage in the form of a conceptual tape that the machine could seek back and forwards along. Hodson's white paper talks about stacks (as used in FORTH and various non turing-complete automata) but appears to refer to his VM as using a stack. I can't really see much difference between this and FORTH. Perhaps I am exhibiting high specific gravity but the parallels between this VM and a turing machine seem pretty strained. He doesn't really talk about the "stack" on this machine being random access, and I can't really see how this would help beyond the mark, dup, roll etc. operators that FORTH VM's have anyway. (Note to self - Can't actually remember if FORTH does marks on the stack; I might be confusing it with Postscript)
To save me having to trot down the road to Borders and buy the java VM spec, could someone who understands the architectures of Java and FORTH say something cogent on the differences?
Roger Penrose is perhaps the latest of a long line of individuals who have argued the brain has powers beyond a Turing Machine. Despite his claims, the jury is definitely still out on this.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The Java byte code really isn't all that slow. In fact, making the VM smaller would actually probably make it slower since you'd be leaving out things like a JIT or any sort of optimization. Generally speaking, there is a compromize between speed and size - large usually is faster (optimized for speed), smaller usually is slower (optimized for size).
The JVM itself is a nice speedy little thing. It's not slow. It's the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) that's slow! Since almost all Java apps require some form of GUI interaction, and the AWT is the means of graphical interaction, the AWT becomes a signifigant bottleneck. If Sun spent some time on speeding up the AWT, all those pretty graphical Java apps would receive a nice speed boost.
Even with the JIT turned off, Java bytecode alone usually runs at a decent clip. Unfortunately for Java applications, the AWT is very slow - it actually became slower in JDK1.2 and is picking up some speed in JDK1.3 (it hasn't regained it's JDK1.1 speed though).
If anyone wants to read a more indepth benchmark comparing x86 C with Java code, try here.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
You can also store data in the state of the machine, instead of writing it on the tape. Turing machines don't have registers, nor stacks, nor random access memory, but they can be in any number of different states. So to do anything non-trivial, you end up with a heck of a lot of machine states, connected together in a complex network. In order to copy a number, you have to suck up some of that number into the machine state "temporary storage", then go into a state that moves the read/write head to the destination while remembering the temporary state, and then go through a series of states that writes the machine state out onto the tape while moving the head. So you could write a program that copied a number one bit at a time by moving back and forth between source and destination, using relatively few machine states. Or a program that copied numbers more efficiently n bits at a time with 2^n and then some machine states. To do anything non-trivial, you end up with zillions of machine states, representing a network of all possible values of temporary storage connected by tape seeking and writing instructions, and you also require infinite amounts of tape to execute the program.
Think of it like an Adventure (MUD) game with one deterministic player, who is carrying a tape and read/write head. The state of the machine is which room you're in, plus the state of the tape and position of the head. Each room has a door labeled for each possible token on the tape, and when you walk through correct door, it can write a token on the tape, and move the head up or down. A program is a set of interconnected rooms. You have to double the number of rooms (states) to represent one bit of information in the machine state, like the Star Trek episode when they were beamed aboard an exact duplicate of the Enterprise, that represented one bit (the answer to the question "Is this real?").
It's hard for me to believe that they're using a Turing machine model for efficiency's sake.
-Don
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A few years ago, I heard that C-64s were still in production for sale in either Mexico or China, where PCs were too expensive for the general public. Not sure whether that's the case now, with the abundancy of cheap Pentioid PCs.
So let me get this straight... A little known dot com does what Sun has been spending millions of dollars and years of development time trying to do. (i.e. Get Java on embedded devices)
I hope this IS a hoax, if not, I'd think everyone SHOULD lose an faith in Sun.
After reading all the white papers, I was able to draw out some facts:
VM is supposedly 70k, supports multi-threading and GC. No graphics capability however. I wonder how big the Palm KVM is at? It includes a small implementation with graphics.
Compatible with Java 1.3 as far as class file format goes. Supposedly runs can interpret any Java bytecode.
The VM itself is called Geneva, and runs on an engine/system/framework called Origin.
Origin itself is composed of small building blocks with a "high dehree of reuse". An interesting twist is that while of course they wish the internal blocks (procedures) to be closed, they encourage outside blocks to be developed and will pay royalties to the developer of these outside blocks if they are incorperated into the core.
Right now, it appears to work on x86 chips and Sparc chips - the Origin system itself must be ported to other platforms, and then Genevia will run on top of it.
Origin itself has some sort of primitive internal database/file system, and they talk of perhaps working with DB companies to improve on that.
You can write directly in Origin if you like, but there is no kind of IDE or the like - they encourage use of the Genevia Java VM as an easy path to using Origin.
It sounds kind of interesting. What they need to do now is release it for the Palm.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
However with ORIGIN there is the possibility of provably correct code. This has special importance for safety critical systems, where ORIGIN may have particular advantages.
Hmmm... I hope they're not claiming to solve the halting problem with this statement. If so, bravo!
Generally though, me thinks the white papers reak
like a dirty diaper.
Upon seeing the box was too small, Schrodinger's Elephant breathed a sigh of relief.
Man, what a wasted time. Now I'll be able to run a Java-based clock on my calculator. Great! Java is so slow, that nothing interesting will work on a 8-bitter. Those CPUs need to be coded in assembly, not some HLL, and DEFINITELY not something a clockcycle-wasting as Java! Why did this ever become featured, anyway?
Time to dig out those old cheap 8-bit processors and overclock the hell out of them. I overclocked a ZX Spectrum from 3.5MHz t 5MHz once. The ALU chip got really hot, and it was very difficult to type because the key repeat delay was too short.
It has been a few decades since we have had to think seriously about making things small. It is a fine, albeit a lost, art. News flash: you make code small with embedded interpreters. Threaded code, microcode, internal data bases and so forth are the meat and marrow of coding tiny. An extensible VM or bytecode interpreter as a vehicle for making code small isn't news either -- that was the fundamental operation of threated interpretive languages such as Forth. These are great, difficult and fun things to do. But, alas, nobody has really much use for this sort of thing anymore. Every now and then, we need this kind of thing again. But coding for 8-bit machines? Why?
Besides, Java is only useful when it has some windowing libraries and the like, those still need to be built for each cel phone or whatever device that the stuff will go on. I don't think that something can really be touted as a Java implementation unless a large majority of the libs (javax.swing.*, etc) also exist. If you can't run StarOffice on your cel phone, what good is it?
Excuse me, but using StarOffice on my cel phone is your ultimate idea of usefullness for Java on a cel phone? Hello ?
Java means WORA. PDA's, CellPhones and other small personal handheld devices aim to deliver the highest degree of functionality while staying relatively inexpensive. Having this new JVM adds the prospect of designers being able to tune their memory requirements very specifically towards the functional objectives of these devices. I think it's use is fairly obvious: the JVM will be able to download any code from anywhere and execute it safely, as any JVM should. This means your cell phone acts as a pluggin into a webservice rather than having to carry the whole caboodle with you. It means your cellphone's hardware will need to be supporeted, and that's it. Anything else might be delivered over the net (in reality ofcourse this will be balanced out so the thing comes with the most common basic functionality and libraries). The advantages are legio.. new real-time updates of the internal software of your cellphone.. you name it..
If you really want to write a StarOffice document on your cellphone (which is a horrible thought on itself) you'll be swapping modules internally in your cellphone to access the code that is required at a specific instant of time.
Try to think differently.. these things have their uses, but people still have trouble to adjust their ways of using them, thinking about them, thinking about and exploring new hidden opportunities.. Java was built originally to serve this purpous, so the availability of this new KVM can only mean more possibilities, more ease, more joy.. don't think in old fashioned pardigma's like Java = { Libraries }.. it doesn't do justice to the mentality behind the concept.. even MS knows it's a proven model. It just needs to mature, grow and explore it's own boundaries.. and this will take much more time before the rules of the game will be totally clear to most.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Anyone notice that only Anonymous Cowards post this kind of junk? And he wonders why Slashdot is fast approaching the signal/noise ratio of Usenet.
It's all about the Karma Points, baybee...
Moderators: Read from the bottom up!
SIG: HUP
in practice, most people don't write their programs in 6502 assembler.
(ICK! The language is called assembly, not assembler. Would you like it if I called the C++ language "compiler"?)
That's because most people don't develop for C=64, Apple II, or NES. I still write NES software in assembly because I haven't yet taken the time to get CC65 working and get a C library written. But handcoded assembly does give you the tightest code if you know what you're doing with respect to the pipeline (6502 has one short pipeline so it's easier here).
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The NES uses a modified 6502 processor that loses the binary coded decimal instructions and adds on-die sound hardware. The SMS (and its portable cousin Game Gear) uses the Z80 processor, which has a set of rollback registers remarkably similar to the Crusoe CPU's. But it still wouldn't be hard for One80 to port the 8-bit JVM to other 8-bit CPUs.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Also, what about those great TI calcs? Aren't they 8-bit?
The TI-82, -83, -85, and -86 use an 8-bit Z80 processor. (The Game Boy uses a Z80 clone.) The TI-89, on the other hand, uses the same 68000 processor that the Sega Genesis console and early Macintosh computers used.
my 86 has Zelda, Lemmings, Mario, Tetris, and various other things on it
Didn't Nintendo sue TICalc.org for infringing on Nintendo's trademarks and copyrighted character likenesses? If not, they probably will soon.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Motorola 6507 CPU
No, MOS Technologies made the original 6500 series.
The 6502 was an 8-bit processor with a 16-bit address bus. The 6507 was the exact same processor with two modifications -- a 13-bit address bus and it had no interrupt lines.
More Atari 2600 specs: The system had two 1-bit sprites and three rectangular sprites. It also had only 128 bytes of RAM and half a scanline's worth of video RAM. Even making Tetris is close to impossible, as Tetris uses a 10x20 field which at first glance does not fit into 128 bytes.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
OK, 8-bit processor instructions are 8-bit, and 32-bit instructions are 32-bit. Moreover, memory pointers on 8-bit systems are normally 16-bit (relative and zero-page pointers are 8-bit), and on 32-bit systems they are, well, 32-bit (rel. and 0-page 16-bit). With 1-byte alignment, data structures are as big on 8-bit systems as they are on 32-bit systems.
;-)
;-) for its simple tasks. Then again, this makes me wonder why a wrist watch needs Java; it doesn't really benefit from "run once, compile everywhere" code[*], the only thing that really matters to such a watch is how it communicates with the outside world. Well, maybe system updates... I don't know. I just don't yet see the use of my fridge talking in a 4gl. He can just use compiled-to-machinecode programs as far as I'm concerned. Then, if it's an 8-bit processor, the program itself will be about 1/4th of a 32-bit program, and the VM will be 0 bytes.
;-)
So the VM might indeed be shrunk a lot, say it may become a little more than 1/4 of its original size if you put it on an 8-bit system. This would be a nice rate for any "embedded" program.
Alas, the VM is not the program. It simply is the VM. The program is written in "run once, compile everywhere" code[*], so this code has the same size no matter where you put it.
And I recall the class libraries are something like 20 Mb of code. And while an embedded program might just not require, for instance, Swing, it is part of standard Java AFAIK. What I am trying to say is that programs expect the standard class library to be there, so it'll cost you 20 Mb of space anyway. To set up 20 Mb of space on an 8-bit machine, you would cross some 64k boundaries
One solution might be to get rid of the class libraries, and write the code yourself, or "statically link" the code. This makes your program bigger...
You might argue that e.g. a wrist watch wouldn't need class libraries (e.g. Swing
While I'm talking about this, does anyone know how many bits a single Java instruction is?
[*] OK, I wanted to write "compile once, run anywhere", but this appeared instead. Given that much Java VM's are Jitter-based (compile to machinecode on the fly), I actually think that this typo isn't that goofy
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
- As noted before, Java has been available on tiny platforms before, probably starting with the Dallas Semiconductor iButton, right up to the JavaCard-containing American Express Blue. In fact, Amex is even running a contest challenging developers to create new applications.
- Java as a tool for embedded systems has been around for a while and continues to grow. From satellite phones, to the Sega Dreamcast, to the new DoCoMo i-mode phones, Java is in those tiny devices with limited speed, memory, and UI components.
- Java primitive type sizes are specified by the language, not the native platform. So an integer is always 32-bits. That's what makes the code so easily mobile. C/C++ programmers: what is the size and sign of the expression 1000*UINT64?
- Java can't be small because the libraries require so much space? The libraries are not the JVM. Java the APIs run from the full enterprise suite, which includes EJBs, messages, directory services, etc, to the standard, which includes all the UI, to the micro edition,which drops Swing and (in some cases, because of lack of hardware support) floating point, down the the tiny javacard APIs which are stripped to the bare essentials. Each is targetted towards a different environment, and given the limited UI capabilities of things like the Palm, you wouldn't want Swing anyway, because you've only got 160 pixels square for drawing.
As for the merits of OneEighty Software's technology itself, I'm extremely suspicious. Nothing new here, and its appearance on Sun's Java marketing area doesn't make it more credible.The first Java story to come along on slashdot since the "why linux users diss Java" story. That feature demonstrated just how far out of touch CmdrTaco and the slashdot cabal are with the Java community, and this one merely reiterates that.
The real story on Java now is in server-side, XML handling, the recent release of Sun's MID profile for PalmOS, the results of the community process elections, and of course Java the continued adoption of Java technology for the wireless services industry.
For the practical programming of even simple computer games, is ORIGIN any better than Java, which totally sucks ass?
Why is a statement like 'Java totally sucks ass' insightful? It isn't even true for game programming, for which Java certainly wasn't designed.
What if this technology were combined with some of the efforts being made by the folks at Transmeta? Couldn't it be possible to implement the origin and Geneva code(since it is so small) at the code morphing level of a Transmeta chip? In essence, couldn't this provide a sort of native java machine? This seems like it could offer an ideal situation for the Origin code to run at a best level of performance. Someone let me know if I'm way off base here, but this would seem to be a unique opportunity for both Transmeta and 180Software.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
java is a bloated pig, and i recognize it is the most sane implementation of a modern OO language we have right now.
but regarding those benchmarks with java and c, they are all heavily biased towards java. how you say? because they end up timing C's memory management which makes calls directly to the OS. On the java side, we only see grabs from the VM's pre-benchmark-timing-OS-allocated heap space. in the benchmarks, we do not see the time java spends cleaning up, but since the c code makes an explicit call to free, we see c's. in the Fourier test, they were using System.arraycopy for java and doing a for loop to move memory in c (yah, instead of memmove.)
now, this is using java to emulate c, if the comparison were object oriented dev using c++/stl vs java, java would be blown to bits.
jim
When I first heard about embedded java I put it right with WinCE in the "Why?!" catagories. I believe that java is a pretty good RAD language and it is nice to have a web enabled platform independent gui standard. These are its strengths and they are great for web programs where bandwidth is often the limiting factor, not code spead and control. Put more in the VM and make the code that is moved about smaller. Let someone write to one gui standard.
In the world of gigabit NICs and FibreChannel RAID controllers running on InfiniBand, java just doesn't fit. Sure you can take a chainsaw to it and cut out what you don't need. This isn't java anymore though. If it doesn't run all the sun APIs, it isn't java. Now if sun starts bending on that for publicity and cash ("How much does a java logo cost?") than they look real hipocritical considering their battle with MS.
Even with a chainsawed java, it still doesn't make sense. Java has no stack structures except for primitives. It gives the author little control of memory deallocation. This is a big issue when you have limited amounts RAM and no swap. Also, having "secret" threads running around freeing memory while the author needs code to run at a specific rate really hurts. Graphics? What does an anti-lock breaking system need with graphics code?
I suspect there is reason that most embedded/realtime OSs are written in C/assembly and have those types of APIs. Even C++ is feared due to sense of lack of control. The STL is never used without source control of it. At these levels programmers are pulled back to the days when size and speed really mattered. Java can't give you that. A JVM takes up too much space in software and java chips are often too big, require too much power or are too expensive or all of the above. I suspect that JVMs in an embedded environment would find it hard to achieve C/assembly speeds. In the gui feature rich world it doesn't matter that much. In the world were the two major features are send and receive, size and speed are king.
-- soldack
Ummm yah - if its verified somehow, I'd say that would get you a nobel prize in physics.
see subject.
Can your IM do this?
Java on a palm pilot or cell phone...? Absolutely. With PTSC's new ignite1 ROSC microprocessor, speed is unmatched by any comparable RISC due to a reduced memory footprint, as well as power consumption reduced to less than 0.5 mV/MHz... not to mention it is the least expensive out there also. And getting ready to roll out is their .18 micron ROSC @ ~350 MHz.
Depends on what your definition of "sophisticated computer game" is. *If* you're talking fps monsters, be they 2d or 3d, then of course Java sucks (for now).
Smaller doesn't necessarily mean faster.
For a trivial example: take a variable swap.
I want to put the value of X into Y.
You can do it with only the X and Y variables... a few XOR operations, and voila! Done.
But it's much faster, and easier to use up a whole extra variable Z to use as a temp var...
Bigger can mean faster.
So what if... So what if... So what if...
So what if they have their head stuck up their ass? So what if they lie about having the first 8 bit Java? So what if they lie about having the smallest Java implementation? So what if they brush questions of performance under the rug? As long as their bullshit benefits the Greater Glory of Java, we love them. Let the blowjobs begin!
After all that bullshit about Java, and all of Sun's bullshit about "write once run anywhere", why are you so willing to give ORIGIN the benefit of the doubt that maybe they're not even slightly exagerating or omiting parts of the whole story, even if they don't have a demo you can download and test out for yourself. Have you already fallen for so many outlandish lies about Java that these wee little fabrications don't even register on the logarithmic Richter scale any more?
(Well, now that I think about it, you're right: I suppose it's best for Java in the long run, if we lie about how great it is, and make lots of promises we know we'll never be able to keep, and pretend to believe other pro-java liars. After all, Java was designed as a tool in the war against Microsoft. And there's nothing more important than going to war. Just explain to the families of the vets who were poisoned by depleted uranium shells and agent orange that the ends justify the means.)
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/bs.html
"The Gene Machine
Professor Bernard Hodson (now based in Ottawa) has developed a programming system called Genetix. It is claimed that this is more efficient than any software currently used, and differs radically from everything done in the last fifty years by drawing on Turing's original concepts. [...]
[...] At present the work is apparently bound by commercial secrecy, but I hope that soon these surprising claims will be opened to general scientific discussion. Until then they will be hard to evaluate.
However, my business on this website is to explain what Alan Turing said and did; and I do think I can say that Hodson and Bloor are on doubtful territory in claiming that the Genetix programming ideas derive directly from Turing's writings. They quote quite general statements made by Turing in advancing the ideas of a universal machine, of the stack, and of program libraries, when all these ideas were completely fresh. They go on to interpret them in what seem to me much more specific modern terms, in support of the Genetix approach. I am sceptical as to whether the Genetix system actually derives from anything Turing had in mind.
To illustrate my point, note that the Genetix prospectus rests upon distinguishing the Universal Turing Machine concept from the stored-program concept. Turing himself, however, made no such distinction, and in 1948 clearly referred to all the digital computers then under construction as 'practical universal computing machines.'
Two possible confusions
As far as I can see there is no connection between Genetix and 'genetic programs' which improve themselves by means analogous to biological evolution by selection. (Turing might in fact be credited with the basic idea of such programs. Right from the start he emphasised the idea that the stored-program computer can modify its own instructions, suggesting that this capacity could be developed into the ability to learn from experience.)
Also, this Genetix has no connection with the Genetix which campaigns against the development of genetically modified organisms."
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
... didn't netscape implement java for Win3.1? If so, that makes Anderson and co. the 1st to stake claim to an 8bit java platform.
Zork and all the other early Infocom games used a VM (called the Z-machine) to run their games on 8-bit platforms. This VM spec is still used today for new IF games. Also, the Apple ][ ROM had an interpreter for performing 16-bit integer math calculations, called "Sweet 16". Applesoft itself was interpreted, like many other BASICs.
The white paper is a crackpot spewing about "state of mind" and "genomes" and trying to appear academic. If he has any new ideas, I'm not able to penetrate the BS to find them. Turing machine == Von Neumann machine == any calculating device, so what's new here?
If he was posting on USENET he would be using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS for certain KEY TERMS that expressed his REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS.
According to that...
"Not only will the entire GENETIX Java environment will fit on a smart card, but it also fully supports the Java 2 platform version 1.2. This means that you could create an entire Swing application on a smart card!"
Which if true is very impresive! A big *if* though...
Doesn't the use of loops and functions to quicken the job of programing actualy slow down the process? for example... for a = 1 to 100 print $getline(a) increase A next a would be slower than... print $getline(1) print $getline(2) print $getline(3)...etc I would think not having to process the extra increase, and the if would speed it up. but also increase the size of the end program.
Looping code can improves a program's use of CPU cache. In your second code example, huge loops would require many sequential code pages to be paged in from disk. Much more expensive than saving a i++ loop counter..
cpeterso
If you read the post to which I was responding, you'll see the point I was making wasn't that C has a fixed word size, it was that Java has no such thing as native support for arbitrary precision numbers.
The web page says this jvm will run on the 8085 8 bit processor. Does anyone know about this processor? Intel/Motorola/other? ML Compatible with which line? etc. thanks
well, if you'd like to know more about the VM spec, read it here. The VM doesn't care about class libraries, only that code is converted to bytecode correctly. The class libraries you will have available depend on the platform that you are developing for, so I doubt that javax.swing.anything will be available for an embedded machine. This is a VM implementation, and not a JDK.
I agreee that those whitepapers are worthless. I thought whitepapers were supposed to be the geeky stuff for us.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Neat stuff but ... it still doesn't address two big issues:
1. On most platforms stack memory allocate is much faster than dynamic. As far as I know, Java does not support allocating structures on the stack.
2. With limited resources, programmers need tight control over memory deallocation. While you can force a call to the GC, it is usually not a synchronous call. Sometimes you need to know all the memory from step 1 is free before going to to step 2.
A bit about this paticular JVM. It does not support 64-bit data types. 64-bit PCI, PCI-X and Infiniband all require 64-bit addressing. That makes this unusable for most I/O adapters unless this JVM supports 64-bit addressing with its references types but hides it from the user.
Oh well...
-- soldack
After reading all the white papers on their site, I still don't know what 180 has re-invented: FORTH, the subroutine, or the Lisp machine?
"When do you work?" "Whenever I'm not busy."
10 x 20 = 200. But since a Tetris piece is either there or not ("on" or "off") you could easily render that in 200 bits, which would fit into just 25 bytes.
BugBear
Ignorance is curable. Stupid is forever.
The TINI has a 32-bit processor; one of their custom 8051 variants. But maybe the Java iButton is 8-bit, I'm not sure.