Hardware architecture for Java in a hardware/software co-design of the virtual machine

Abstract

This paper discusses the hardware architecture used in the hw/sw co-design of a Java virtual machine. The paper briefly outlines the partitioning of instructions and support for the virtual machine. Discussion concerning the hardware architecture follows focusing on the special requirements that must be considered for the target environment. A comparison is performed between this design and that of picoJava, a stand-alone processor for Java. The paper concludes with benchmark results for this architecture compared with software execution.