Re: Design of Virtual Machines

rweaver@ix.netcom.com (Richard Weaver )
16 Apr 1997 00:28:31 -0400

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
Design of Virtual Machines D.C.Page@massey.ac.nz (Dave) (1997-04-03)
Re: Design of Virtual Machines allanmac@blueprint.com (Allan MacKinnon) (1997-04-06)
Re: Design of Virtual Machines dlmoore@ix.netcom.com (David L Moore) (1997-04-06)
Re: Design of Virtual Machines elcm@pacbell.net (Eliot & Linda) (1997-04-06)
Re: Design of Virtual Machines oz@ds9.rnd.border.com (1997-04-13)
Re: Design of Virtual Machines rweaver@ix.netcom.com (1997-04-16)
| List of all articles for this month |

From: rweaver@ix.netcom.com (Richard Weaver )
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 16 Apr 1997 00:28:31 -0400
Organization: Netcom
References: 97-04-026 97-04-068
Keywords: interpreter, history, comment

Dave <D.C.Page@massey.ac.nz> writes [in part]:
>> I am interested in the design of virtual machines, their
architecture,
>> instructions sets, the context they were uses in, interpreters and so
>> on.
>>
>> I would greatly appreciate any references to papers/books/web sites
>> etc which cover the background and use of VMs.


Just noting that VMs are not new; they have been here since the 1950s
(at least). An early one would be the "Bell Lab Interpreter" for the
IBM 650. As I recall, it defined a three address virtual machine,
while the 650 was a two address machine (where the 2nd address was
usually the address of the next instruction).
[Quite true, before compilers came along, there were a bunch of these
higher-level machine like codes that provided features not available in
hardware, e.g., floating point arithmetic and I/O conversions. -John]
--


Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.