Re: Ada and JVM? Why not AdaVM?

["Larry J. Elmore" <ljelmore@home.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:

> In article <3A79FE73.3D7F12A0@home.com>,
>   "Larry J. Elmore" <ljelmore@home.com> wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately, it's failure was also perceived by many to
> > also be the failure of the ideas behind the architecture.
>
> Entirely fair, the design was misconceived

It's been a _long_ time since I've read anything detailed on the 432,
but it seemed to me that some of its ideas had merit -- at least if your
goal was safety and reliability, not speed. Whether that might be better
done by software I honestly don't know.

> > The 432 might not have been a stellar performer even with the best
> possible implementation of the

> > architecture
>
> Indeed.

Yes, I should have said _could not_, not "might not".

>
> > but a lot of truly terrible decisions were made in its actual
> > implementation that effectively crippled it.
>
> Nothing could have rescued it in my opinion. The design had the
> appearence of being done by high level language folks with no
> view of what could be implemented efficiently.

Then those who implemented the hardware made things even worse.

> There was really
> nothing specifically Ada about the design.

Custom microcode could be provided, though. I remember reading an
article about a 432 with microcode specifically written to support
Smalltalk's VM. I don't specifically recall what the performance was,
but the combination of the 432 and Smalltalk must've been truly
glacial...

Larry