Dynamic in this case means that some code is emulated on the fly, and some is translated. This approach was pioneered for bytecode systems in Smalltalk implementations in the 80's, and of course is now used in Sun's HotSpot and other dynamic adaptive JVMs.
Static binary translators have been around for even longer, and were used (among other things) for running VAX programs on Alpha.
A useful overview of this sort of technology appeared in the Digital Technical Journal 4:4 (1992). HP also performed binary translation between the HP3000 and the Precision architecture, but I can't find on-line info on that, just a citation to a paper article (1987).
There is also a useful survey article on static and dynamic binary translation.
What is presumably novel in Transmeta's approach is that their instruction set architecture (ISA) is tuned specifically for dynamic translation (see page 12ff of Transmeta's paper The Technology Behind Crusoe Processors. Some microcode architectures have been designed specifically for general emulation (most have been tuned for a particular macroinstruction ISA), e.g. the early Lisp Machines (1976-81).
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You seem to misunderstand the situation.
Chandler has very little in common with Agenda other than being a PIM. Certainly there is no Agenda code in it.
I don't know what's news about Chandler today -- it's been in alpha for a while.
Digital (Compaq) developed an x86 Dynamic Binary Translator running on Alpha called FX!32. FX!32 won Byte Magazine's "Best Technology" award at Fall Comdex '95.
Dynamic in this case means that some code is emulated on the fly, and some is translated. This approach was pioneered for bytecode systems in Smalltalk implementations in the 80's, and of course is now used in Sun's HotSpot and other dynamic adaptive JVMs.
Static binary translators have been around for even longer, and were used (among other things) for running VAX programs on Alpha. A useful overview of this sort of technology appeared in the Digital Technical Journal 4:4 (1992). HP also performed binary translation between the HP3000 and the Precision architecture, but I can't find on-line info on that, just a citation to a paper article (1987). There is also a useful survey article on static and dynamic binary translation.
What is presumably novel in Transmeta's approach is that their instruction set architecture (ISA) is tuned specifically for dynamic translation (see page 12ff of Transmeta's paper The Technology Behind Crusoe Processors . Some microcode architectures have been designed specifically for general emulation (most have been tuned for a particular macroinstruction ISA), e.g. the early Lisp Machines (1976-81).