Hey, On 3 October 2011 18:38, pancake <panc...@youterm.com> wrote: > Because there's nothing virtual in a real architecture. And emulating it is > just an emulation. Virtualization is not supported by mips. So..
You're right, MIPS isn't a VM, it's an ISA. But the Dis virtual machine is based upon the Dis ISA (a CISC-like bytecode); likewise the JVM, CLR, etc. So MIPS isn't a VM, but a VM may implement MIPS. On 3 October 2011 19:08, pancake <panc...@youterm.com> wrote: > Nope. Virtualization != emulation != simulation != interpretation. The difference between an emulator and a VM is that an emulator simulates a specific device / processor, rather than executing the ISA itself. If we were to emulate the N64, it would be an emulator; if we were to virtualise MIPS, it would be a VM. > Nevertheless when ppl talk about virtual machines they usually refer to > pieces of software that implement machines that cannot be implemented by > hardware because they provide high level opcodes and primitives. Anything that can be implemented in software can be implemented in hardware; it's simply not cost-effective to do so. So yeah, MIPS may well be the best ISA for a 'multi-language' VM. (Holy acronyms, Batman.) cls
