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New Processor Design from Sun Microsystems
IQ writes "This NYTimes article discusses Sun's latest chip, known as Microprocessor Architecture for Java Computing or MAJC. Looks like a huge, fast MultiDiePackage with a lotta chips.
" Fits in well with Sun's continuing attempt to route around Intel-these chips are look like they are philosphically aligned with Jini. More specs will be coming out later on this month. (Free login required @ NYT).
- Just like PC chips understand x86 instructions... as a new standard, just like the PIII and whatnot
- This type of technology can no doubtedly be moved over to other architectures easily. If a lot of the java code gets interpreted inside the chip, other architectures can take on this quality.
- Turn it into a PCI mounted board and make it portable to those with those welded in CPU's or just plain old stuff..
Then again...- Hopefully this won't require some sort of software support like the Cyrix CPU's did with their drivers.
- Sun won't make a big deal over outsourcing this
Just some ideas to spout out.-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I think this has been done already. My understanding is that VM Labs has made a chip, and has already begun making partnerships with other companies like Motorola. Here's my source of info:
Here's an article from Wired magazine interviewing and profiling VM Labs
Here's VM Labs's url:
Is it just me or isn't the VM Labs chip pretty much the same thing?
Has anyone have current news of VM Labs progress in getting it's chip in devices?
B.
Thanks for weighing in with a detailed, thoughtful comment on the subject. Like you, I too feel that it would interesting to see specific-language chips and see how well they DO work rather than just speculating on it. -- Michael Chermside
> if there's one thing that really intruiged me about it was that it is dynamically scoped, opposing just about every other language in common use throughout the world. this, unfortunately, is so confusing to the masses, while being WILDLY useful to those who know how to harness it's power... ;)
:)
>is it that feature that you can triangulate down to when you think about what *really* stands out in lisp?
Well it's the whole. It's quite hard to name a single feature, but I probably most like the dynamic nature of the language, which enables the programmer to extend the language to his needs. The dynamism has also led to the continuous evolution of the language. CLOS is quite a lot more elegant than most OO languages. For instance most of the design patterns in the GOF book solve problems that simply don't exist in Common Lisp. CL is capable of updating a system while it's running and that is no small feat. In how many OO languages is it possible to change the class of an object at run-time ?
It's a mature and constantly evolving language and also 40 years old. You'd think that a language matures in that time
AC
s/William/Bill A , but then I realized that he is God.
--Danka, who likes kids, but wouldn't want to eat one
If the majority of programmers understood
good programming practices they would
understand the purpose of using java over
another language, its only good for
prototyping, not for actual implementation..
Everyone compares it to C, C has the potential
to produce bugs because it doesn't handle
exceptions (trapped errors), true inheritance in
objects (in the case of C++).. Its all a matter
of mechanism vs. policy, if you are a good
programmer you could code in assembly, but
to be virtually bug free you would have to address
all the safeguards that java does, and your code
would be slow eventually.. The answer is to
make the hardware faster (hey 20 years ago nobody ever thought they would use more than a megabyte).. Everyone is seduced by the possibility
of losing efficiency to safety procedures,
its a trade-off like anything else.. If you
are for defensive programming, use java and learn
to use the practices that the language enforces..
Otherwise use C and consider the possible
problems and cover them with your own code
infastructure for tracking bugs..
What is your comfort threshold? What
is it you need to do?? Would you use C,
Perl, Lisp, Java.. etc.. Don't be a stupid
twit!
The reason Java is slow is because its
a machine emulation not only a language..
Its like as if you got the OS and language
bundled in one, based upon a simulated architecture.. Usually you get the hardware
and code the language and then the OS..
The previous is a new approach to
machine/OS/language design for the general audience, and the general audience can't
see 2 inches in front of its collective faces..
Oh well, maybe when our applications are more
buggy and virus ridden, people will get a clue..
What about Scheme? How does that compare to Common Lisp?
Stephen Molitor steve_molitor@yahoo.com
As long as we're piling on... "you're" should have been "your".
-- Eric
Nothing 100% concrete as such (i.e. no direct quote from either Collas or Torvalds, but then neither are likely to own up to such, even if it is 100% true, are they...)
However, there is sufficient indirect evidence in my personal view, to support this claim, plus a few interesting "Don't you dare tell anyone I said this" pieces from some folk under NDA from Amiga (no, I don't mean QNX, I mean independant developers etc who can't believe they way in which Amiga made such a large sudden U-turn so late in development).
The more I dig, the more it seems to be the ONLY valid conclusion (all other explanations, be they the official cover story, or other plausable explainations frm elsewhere, all seem to fall down when closely examined) - once I get a bit more, I'll post it.
You are talking about HotSpot performance, aren't you ?
An observation from a non-native english speaker:
"Grammer" should be "grammar". This is one of the most common mistakes I've seen. The other common ones I've seen include like writing "thier" instead of "their", "your" vs. "you're", "redicilous" vs. "ridiculous" and so forth. Maybe my english teacher was too hard on me, but I seem to notice these things all the time. The important thing is still that people get their point across.
Of course, bad english gives an unprofessional impression of the writer to the readers, but people should still consider that many non-native speakers have a hard enough time trying to express their opinions in english. OTOH, isn't it amazing how well many non-native speakers know english ?
I've also seen quite bad spelling errors from native speakers as well, but that might be dyslexia (or then again, maybe not).
AC
Oh, I don't know. Remember the Apple ][ ? It was very popular and at the time no one thought of it as slow. What most people didn't know was that the Apple ][ firmware contained a 16 bit virtual machine. Much of the software for the Apple ][ was not written to the 8-bit 6502 cpu but to the 16 bit Apple virtual machine. At the time, most people thought the Apple ][ was ``high tech'' and very fast, even when running software targeted to the virtual cpu.
How can the absence of true inheritance in C++ cause bugs??
try {
someFunction()
} catch (Exception e)
{ }
(An evil coding practice, if I've ever seen it.)
Java removes a certain group of bugs, but plenty plenty remain for QA to find.
rbb (Has anyone compiled a list of Java coding conventions for Meta level issues?)
The article about sun's new processor in sun's website reads:
Coming Soon from Sun: MAJC TM - The Convergence Microprocessor
The C o n v e r g e n c e processor. Also check MSNBC's coverage of the story for features as multiple MPEG streams and 3d accelaration.
On top of that check out the "Joy of Computing article" on sun's Java site (http://java.sun.com) to see the "vision of Collas and Amiga Objects" through the lips of Bill Joy Sun's chief technologist.
The vision of Amiga is the vision of SUN.
There is no doubt in my mind that the new Amiga is SUN's platform, using sun's technologies and a sun microprocessor. Amiga is the spearhead of sun's attack on the wintel platform.
I'm seeing a lot of posts saying that chips designed for a specific language are a Bad Thing. I tend to agree.
BUT I think this argument overlooks something important. A Java chip would not interpret Java at the brace-and-semicolon level, it would read Java bytecodes. Java bytecodes are basically machine language for a microprocessor that exists only in software. It is only logical to make such a chip in hardware eventually.
Furthermore, if the specs for a "Java chip" are open, what is to keep compiler writers from implementing back-ends which write Java bytecodes? I'm not a compiler writer, but it seems like it would be quite possible to implement, for example, a C or C++ compiler which writes Java bytecodes instead of x86/68000/Alpha/Sparc/whatever machine code. Such a compiler would make the "Java chip" usable by people who don't like writing Java.
I seem to recall seeing at least one compiler that takes a non-Java language (Perl, I think) and compiles it to Java bytecodes. Also, I know there is one regular slashdot reader who is doing Java programming at the assembly level -- any comments? If a Java chip sees widespread use, anything-to-bytecode compilers would seem inevitable.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Jini and Java are controlled by Sun. Another hardware developer may come up with a better processor, but if any modifications to Java or Jini are necessary to take advantage of the improved processor, I doubt Sun will be much help. If you really believe that Sun will completely open Java or Jini I doubt you have dealt with them much in the past. I haven't seen anything to convince me that Sun is any less zealous than Microsoft in their desire to control their market.
JPython -- Python to Java bytecodes. Not Perl. Many apologies.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
the only way that will ever happen is if its easy, fast and neat for many applications. if you look at most C code, you will find that functions such as recursive directory search routines, file read and write routines, lopps for doing state machine type stuff and relatively similar..most ppl have got so used to them that they write virtually identical stuff. if ppl get used to XML/XSL and its easy to parse from all languages, it will become standard. The problem is most OO stuff is complicated and really *bad* for general use.
In the current issue of Scientific American (August 1999), the Oxygen Project is explored. It reveals an approach in making a chip, along with other programming and devices, more efficient and faster by using logic gates and compiling the wires automatcally on the processor. Basically customizing the wiring for each application.
The chip is called Raw. It is covered in the 4th part of the article, Raw Computation.
'til dawn...
Yes, Byteheads, it's now time for GNU Eiffel.
You don't see a need for a processor with instructions like
but have no problem with processors with instructions likeWhat is the difference you percieve other than the Java machine is stack-based? In what way are the x86 instructions not "interpreted"?
...such as picoJava.
...but with an allegedly-VLIW (assuming VLIW isn't just being used as a marketing-speak alias for "buy this, it's c00l", as e.g. RISC appears sometimes to be used) instruction set, it appears that this chip isn't designed to "execute Java bytecodes directly".
In what fashion does an underlying VLIWish instruction set lend itself to bytecode environments better than does a non-VLIWish instruction set?
Well, to be fair, Intel are also working on what they consider a new style of instruction-set architecture, even if it appears that many of the basic ideas for it came from HP.
Scheme is to Common Lisp as C is to C++...
David
Unfortunately, the corporate fact sheet page on the Dow Jones Web site doesn't seem to say anything about ownership of their shares by other corporations, although the shares are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
(I.e., if you were just jumping on the "MS" part of "MSNBC", and inferring that this was some Evil Microsoft FUD Plot, note that the article looks as if it might be a re"print" of a Wall Street Journal article, not something put out directly by MSNBC.)
Back in the 60's, 70's and 80's there were many commercial processors that directly executed high-level languages. You might want to research the Pascal Microengine, the various Lisp Machines, the Intel i432 (which was an Ada machine), and so on.
Unfortunately, C running on RISC processors turned out to be cheaper and faster.
You could read the textbook "Computers, a Quantitatitive Approach" by Hennessy & Patterson for the deep technical reasons behind this.
Common Lisp, like Scheme and most other modern Lisp variants, uses static scoping by default. (Though dynamic scoping is available too.) Dynamic scoping is useful in a few cases, but usually just causes problems. More important is that objects have dynamic extent. Features like function closures, continuations, etc., are what make Lisp Lisp. That and the ()'s...
David
Seems like Lisp machines all over again.
At least with Wintel, control of computers has been split across two evil companies. Having Sun control Java hardware and the language is simply to ripe for abuse. I'm not too worried - I doubt it will take off.
Of course, if this isn't what Sun is proposing, could someone tell me what this means?
The EE Times also has an article about next gen server technology IBM (via Sequent) and some info about Sun's next-gen stuff. As usual, Sun are saying very little. From what I've heard seperately though, Sun are working on both a form of NUMA and something else called COMA (Cache-Only Memory Architecture). They might be doing both (on the same machine) for their next-gen server - Project Serengheti, because NUMA is good for some types of applications, while COMA is good for others, so by doing both, the end-users can choose which memory architecture best suits their needs.
Could this be the new Amiga processor? Amiga has not confirmed (or denied) the Transmeta rumors.
This is just part of Sun's newest rollout of the Java platform. They're also tossing out Edition versions, with a "Micro" edition for Palm Pilots. I say nice...
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Java has it's origins rooted in a project called OAK (pun unintended). This sought to provide the environment for settop box like devices, so Java is really coming full circle.
Chris Wareham
Wasn't the goal of Java to provide a robust cross-platform environment for running application software? If Java performance requires specialized chips, it would seem to defeat the purpose. Sun has no idea of what to do with Java. They have not made it very easy to port Java to different architectures. For some platforms, the porting work has gone on for years with no end in sight. It is the classic ``solution in search of a problem''. It's time for Sun to get Java back to basics and finish what was initially promised.
I am not worthy!
ZZ
This is the first time I've heard Bill Joy called 'William Joy'. I was wondering who that was for a moment.
BLOCK STRUCTURE breathing apparatus required for special maneuvers!!
I don't see a need for chips optimized to run an intereted language. Java is slow, but the solution is faster *general purpose* chips, not proprietary appliance chips. Ferrchrissakes, what does a 680x++0 or 386++ cost these days? Just crank up the clicks on one of those babies.
See this JavaWorld article from a former Sun engineer. This is about Java from the embedded point of view.
There are more articles (that don't require annoying registrations) at The Register, News.com and Techweb.
Solaris Central will also be covering additional news and updates to the processor. It should be interesting to see what unfolds...
-- Solaris Central - http://w
This works for me:
login: SolarisCentral
password: solaris
if you're the only one providing a given service, that's a monopoly. but it only begins to get called a monopoly when lots of people want that service at once, because only then it is a problem.
Why give a fake id? NYT lets you read their (often excellent) articles for free. Is providing them with some statistical information by registering too much to ask? This seems like a perfectly fair exchange to me.
I haven't received any spam from them, so they seem pretty much a model in that regard.
Well, i think you don't understand OO.
There are lots of different flavours of OO, not just the one you have in mind. As long as you have encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism, certainly it is OO. you might want to check a few more OO systems, especially ones with built-in persistance support, and those that aren't based on class definitions (the "Self" language has no "new", only a "clone"), etc.
I haven't seen anything fundamentally new here. Sun tried this before, they failed and now they are trying again with more or less the same pitch. Has anyone but me noticed that whenever Sun puts out one of these PR sheets John Markoff gets it published prominently in the NY Times (front page for Jini the Sunday Mag for this)?
thanks :)
:)
didn't realize this one.
shows my ignorance
cheers!
Peter
The main problem with specialized hardware is that the people building it tend to get run over by the Silicon steamroller.
"After two years of development, we're proud to announce the new HyperAccel 3000 CPU with hardware support for Snobol. It runs at 100MHz and provides a 4x speedup over general purpose processors for Snobol applications. What's that you say? Intel makes 500MHz CPUs now? #@!$"
I'm not saying that the above scenario will happen in this case. It's usually the small outfits who can't afford to keep up that get burned, and Sun isn't that small. Further, in some situations, the speed gain is so large, that even if you use previous generation fabrication, you can still win: witness the 3D graphics market. But you are competing against parts that have enormous sales volumes and all that implies. If it comes down to a chip with Java support that gives a 1.5x speed-up vs. a commodity CPU, I'd bet on the commodity CPU. It will probably be available at 1.5x higher speeds at comparable cost.
"MyGarage Software just announced a JIT compiler that is 1.5x faster than any earlier Java compilers for x86 CPUs? #$@!"
David
anyone can write a program in Java. It's like C++ or Delphi or any of the other programming languages
No, C++ is open. Java is not open.
By hardwiring aspects of the JVM, the Java programs will run faster. This is nothing new, the CISC and RISC chips all have various functions hardwired in.
This statement is so stupendously uninformed that it defies response.
Several people pointed out it that "goddam" should be "God Damn". Actually, it should be "God Damned", the idea being that the noun modified by this adjective phrase is literally damned by God, presumably to Hell, since that's generally where God is supposed to damn things to, butt-wipe. I added that last word just so the previous sentence wouldn't end in a God damned preposition. Just remember, you can't take grammar too seriously. And you can't add too much water to a nuclear reactor either.
Unfortunately, most people can't wrap their heads around solving problems in Lisp.
Creating graphical interfaces, managing large databases, etc. are all systems that would confound most people in terms of Lisp.
I actually prefer the syntax of Java as a happy medium, but I really like C++ as it is multi-paradigm. I am not forced to conform to one methodology, like Lisp or Java.
Unless I've managed to get this all mixed up, Lisp has dynamic binding, but not dynamic scope. That is, a procedure invocation is always evaluated in the environment in which the procedure was defined, not the environment in which the invocation occurs. Where it makes a difference is when the procedure refers to non-local variables. So, e.g. (this is Scheme, not Lisp):
(define foo (let ((a 1)) (lambda (x) (+ x a))))
(let ((a 2)) (foo 5))
would return 6, not 7, because the invocation of "foo" sees the "a" bound in the first line's "let", not the second, since that's the environment in which the "lambda" was evaluated. Once I was writing a Scheme interpreter (in Java, by the way) and I noticed where with a one-word change I could select between dynamic and lexical scope, by changing which environment to extend when binding the arguments for an application.
That said, I agree that dynamic binding (which I assume is what you meant) makes Lisp incredibly powerful. In fact, it makes nearly all other languages (including Java) seem downright primitive. I mean, imagine actually having to recompile a program each time you want to test a change! In Lisp, you don't even always have to stop the application to apply a patch, let alone rebuild it. Just re-evaluate the definition of the procedure that is changed and code that calls it will seamlessly see the new version. Since symbols are bound dynamically, there's nothing to re-link.
The major argument against Lisp has always been performance, but with moderm hardware that's less of an issue -- to be fair, compare it to Java, not C. Besides, with modern compiler technology, the difference is not as great: I've actually seen a piece of Lisp code run significantly faster than the exactly-equivalent C code.
Now consider the fact that things like maintainability and availability are becoming more important than raw performance. I would think that the ability to apply a patch to, say, an e-commerce server without having to bring the system down, even for a minute would be of a lot of interest to the people running those systems.
Lisp was ahead of its time -- its time is coming now.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
> Scheme is to Common Lisp as C is to C++...
This is bit of an oversimplification, scheme is more pascal-like compared to CL in it's philosophy (not in the language). Quite clean and small. There's a discussion going on at comp.lang.lisp about this matter, you could search deja.com to find it. The thread is of course biased toward CL, because it's comp.lang.lisp, not comp.lang.scheme.
AC
BTW, for those not versed in emacs and lisp, you can get quite a nice interactive development environment by using ILisp (write code in one buffer, test it in another, which runs your favorite Lisp). You can also get a hypertext help system that integrates the CL HyperSpec (hypertext version of the standard) to emacs forming a help system that is similar to that of more advanced C++ IDE's.
You might be thinking that programs need to be written recursively, which is not the case with CL. It has structures that allow quite C-like programming (which might be considered bad lisp).
....).
For instance the if-construct (should be indented, don't know how to do it here):
(if condition then-part else-part)
This isn't much different from the other languages, is it ? Many other constructs also follow the same pattern and are quite like other languages. For example looping through a list:
(dolist (item list ret-value) dosomething-with-item-part)
One good thing about lisp compared to other languages is that you could basically write your own looping constructs to suit your needs, like (doarray
CLOS isn't much different than other OO languages in it's general use. It has a different OO model, which makes it a little different, but nothing that would cause much trouble to most people.
AC
For quite some time now, we've all watched the worldwide criticism of specialized hardware that implements a more abstract instruction set, lisp, java, smalltalk (not sure if the latter actually was turned into hardware), etc. Why is the criticism so harsh? I've not yet really seen anyone GIVE IT A CHANCE before discarding it as a toy. First, a disclaimer: I happen to think java is the best language (ok, toolkit, platform, etc.) that's come around in a long time for general-purpose programming (NOT for operating systems, but hear me out here...). Like it or not, the vast majority (i'd venture a guess at 90%) of software written is NOT (and need not be) of operating system calibre in terms of robustness, quality, performance, maintainability, etc. In many cases, the life expectancy of the software is far too short, because needs, requirements, etc. change very quickly, to warrant the additional time spent in development. Now, remember, i'm a purist by heart, but i do have a pragmatic side to me too. Occationally, the costs just don't justify the benefits. Again, like it or not, i have worked with a great many people that are under too much pressure, lack the skills, or simply don't care enough about the quality of their work to do a good enough job with an "easy" language, let alone one that lets them shoot their foot even more effectively... Anyone who truly thinks that java is "too slow" on modern hardware with modern dynamic compilation technolgies really does need to do a bit more experimentation on their own. There are few problems that i've needed to solve in the last few years that i couldn't *easily* solve with Java, and never did i think that the quality or performance suffered (especially now with heuristic compilers). Remember now, I wasn't building 30,000 user systems, maybe 3,000. Is it the best tool for *every* job? Hell no. Does it solve some things VERY effectively? Absolutely. Would i still write any software requiring the utmost performance in c or c++? Hell yes. As history has taught me, profiling my code shows that 90% of my time is spent in 5% of the software. Again, what percentage of the software I've written has requirements demanding utmost performance? less than 5 percent. Now, i'm biased, that's clear. But, seeing in the first 3 posts, not one constructive thing could be said, i felt it my duty to *try* and present a more pragmatic opinion... i, personally, would LOVE to take a shot at using a higher-level-of-abstraction instruction set, just to see for myself whether or not they're of utility. i don't have the experience with them to either condemn or praise them. i wish the same humility were infectious. as always, my opinions are mine alone, i speak for only myself, and i apologize if i offend. Peter
I bet a Beawolf cluster running on these bad boys would be fast.
Building a hardware java machine isn't necessarily a monopoly just because Sun is doing it. If Sun doesn't allow anyone ELSE to do it.. THEN that'd be a monopoly.
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"All right" is two words. So is "God damn".
Interesting points you made.
;-)
btw, 'allright' should be spelled 'alright'.
PS - sorry - i just got a password and had it mailed to my home address. my slashdot signon is stevechubb.
you bring up many good points. i need to go and *really* learn lisp.
;)
;)
i only learned as much lisp as i *needed* to do my job (specifically, writing some modes in emacs).
if there's one thing that really intruiged me about it was that it is dynamically scoped, opposing just about every other language in common use throughout the world. this, unfortunately, is so confusing to the masses, while being WILDLY useful to those who know how to harness it's power...
is it that feature that you can triangulate down to when you think about what *really* stands out in lisp?
again, it comes down to:
**I** believe i can learn any computer language in the world and be productive. It's my hobby. Functional languages are my toy right now.
on the other hand, the folks who are not "into" learning languages & the science of computing don't have the persistence i seem to. it's not that i don't *wish* they would, i just must pragmatically accept that they will not.
we have different priorities, and that's a *good thing*.
so, seeing as software maintenance is so incredibly important to me (and plays a significant majority-role in software lifecycles), can i expect most software engineers to quickly acquaint themselves with the paradigms behind java? i feel fairly confident in saying yes, because the language is not *that* different to what the masses are accustomed. i'm not certain i can say this about lisp, as much as it intrigues me.
regardless, **I** need to go learn more lisp
Peter
"To all slashdot "writers": you write up 3 sentences that millions of people will read. Is it really that hard to glance over what you just wrote and make sure that you're spelling is allright and your 3 sentences are not clumsy and incomprehensible. I'd be ashamed if ONE person read something i've written which was of such quality. Just a suggestion for improvement."
Anton:
1) It is incorrect grammer to use the digit "3" in English composition. Instead, it should be spelled out as three.
2) The proper capitalization of "i've" is I've.
3) Your last sentence is a fragment. You should preface it with a subject and a verb.
4) The use of conjunctions in prose is improper.
5) Your title is not spelled correctly. The proper spelling of "goddam" is "God damn". Furthermore, the proper vernacular is "God damned" when used as an adjective.
Slashdot is full of non English speakers. You should cut them all some slack. Go drink another cup of coffee.
This is the same AC that wrote the list of 5 errors. While the author was wrong on a number of counts, he was correct in this regard. Allright is spelled either as two words, or as one word with two Ls.
Sun chips aren't exactly inexpensive now.. If this chip (or these chips) is (are) any good, is it a given that they'll be inexpensive?
.. not promise/performance.. not to mention the long term viability of these chips..
This is important, to many customers (I believe that Intel chip sales have increased and accelerated in the past few years relative to Sun chips.. It isn't too hard to understand why..).
The ratio is "relative" price/performance
I work on Suns and have even bought a Sun, but,
I bought a PC recently. It simply gives me more performance/options for what I can afford.
i.e. they will have to undersell these chips to overcome market inertia and this incurs risk.
Sun is bigger than it has ever been, but, they will have to maintain/sustain/accelerate promotion and delivery..
Actually, Jini is open source... anyone can create a Jini device to use or sell. Java is a programming language... anyone can write a program in Java. It's like C++ or Delphi or any of the other programming languages. These are not "one company does everything" technologies.
By hardwiring aspects of the JVM, the Java programs will run faster. This is nothing new, the CISC and RISC chips all have various functions hardwired in.
It's more like a general purpose CPU with some bits to help make it easier to speed up Java, and other languages.
until it is running BSD?
Do you have any evidence to support this assertion, or are you just making this up?
> I happen to think java is the best language (ok, toolkit, platform, etc.) that's come around in a long time for general-purpose programming (NOT for operating systems, but hear me out here...).
It's your right to think that. I for instance happend to think that Common Lisp is the best language (a personal opinion and of course biased to my needs) to come around for a long time. Language designers should look at Lisp first when they start to design new language so as not to re-invent the cool stuff lisp has had... BTW, I think Steele (the guy behind Common Lisp) was also involved in the design of Java. As a language it sure beats C++ hands down.
Someone in comp.lang.lisp proposed the fundamental theorem of programming language evolution: As the current year approaches infinity other languages approach Lisp + Type Inference. This can be seen in Java as well.
AC
Disclaimer: I used to program in C++ (for 7 years, patterns, OOADP, heuristics, OMT, UML, you know the drill), then I discovered Common Lisp and it opened my eyes to the Right Thing. I think other programmers should try it as well and try to keep an open mind. There is no single best language, programmers should learn many. There's CMUCL for linux (www.cons.org), it's excellent compiler Python (not the language) produces native code that is as fast as C (in some cases faster, try numerical code)...
Sun have had processors around for a while now which have been designed to execute Java bytecodes directly, so this aspect of the new design isn't a big deal (calm down, Javaphobics).
;)
The interesting stuff is the VLIW aspect, lending itself to bytecode environments in general (not just Java) as well as hardware-optimised multimedia stuff.
Basically it looks like they're making a stab at a new *style* chip architecture, not just overclocking some knackered design a la Intel.
I'm guessing the Java-related is at least in part due to the marketing guys wanting a hook on it.
As for the guy who said 'whatever happened to SPARCs?', well really, pay attention
__ Em