[oc] Re: Java processor

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr <jecel@merlintec.com>]

On Thu, 01 Feb 2001, Alan Grimes wrote:
> Ionut HRISTODORESCU wrote:
> >  My idea is to build a Java processor. Please tell me what do  you 
> > think about this.
> 
> SUN and IBM came out with a professional one... It didn't catch on...
> Please by all means see if you can track it down... maybe it would be a
> good project for us to try to build a working system with it! =)

The PicoJava II processor you are talking about is available under the
"Sun Community License" for downloading. You can get it for free and
build things with it, but need to negotiate royalties if you want to
sell it.

   http://www.sun.com/microelectronics/communitysource/picojava/

It isn't too bad, and as an example of a very large Verilog program
optimized for synthesis you can probably learn a lot from it. I haven't
tried, but it is possible that it could fit inside a reasonably cheap
FPGA (without any cache, of course).

Sun now has a totally different processor optimized for Java, called
MAJC. Unlike PicoJava, this one does not execute the bytecodes directly.

   http://www.sun.com/microelectronics/MAJC/

The ShBoom people have adapted it to run Java instead of Forth

   http://www.ptsc.com/

And these people also have a dedicated Java chip

   http://www.javamachine.com/gp1000.htm

The ARM folks also adapted their CPU to allow it to be used as a sort
of Java processor:

http://www.arm.com/sitearchitek/armtech.ns4/163f0eba66e77d004125665000520db4/5b0f7d3a50ca4252802569e0003620be!OpenDocument

And though my own processor design is optimized for Self (Sun's good
programming language ;-) it would trivial to rewrite the translation
software to support Java instead.

-- Jecel