[self-interest] MAJC (was: Transmeta)

Jecel Assumpcao Jr. jecel at merlintec.com
Thu Jan 20 19:40:15 UTC 2000


Bharat Bedia wrote:
> This may be a silly question but....in terms of executing byte code on a
> processor do you think its possible for Sun's MAJC chip to run Self byte
> code ?

This is a very good question, and the answer is *yes*.

> Indeed, are there any similarities between the MAJC chip and the
> Transmeta chip ? I'm sure you can tell, I don't know much about
> microprocessors :-(

>From the introduction to MAJC
(http://www.sun.com/microelectronics/MAJC/documentation/majcintro.html):

    - Software Portability

       The MAJC architecture was designed to efficiently execute code generated
        by installation-time or just-in-time (JIT) compilation techniques. It
        may be the first commercial architecture designed without a requirement
        for binary compatibility between generations. This allows MAJC
        implementations to evolve over time without accumulating the baggage
        required to support old binaries, as traditional architectures have
        always done. Instead, software portability across MAJC implementations
        is obtained through use of architecture-neutral means of software
        distribution. 

That would make Crusoe the *second* commercial architecture with that
feature. But I don't think that MAJC has as much support for hiding the
translation process from system-level software as Crusoe does.

The Transmeta chip has some extra support for the X86 emulation (same MMU table
format, same flags, etc.) and MAJC has some support for Java, but either one
would probably do a good job with other instruction formats (like Self
bytecodes, for example.

-- Jecel



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