Comparison of Application Virtual Machines
Encyclopedia
This article lists some software virtual machine
s that are typically used for allowing application bytecode
to be portably run on many different computer architectures and operating systems. The application is usually run on the computer using an interpreter
or just-in-time compilation
. There are often many implementations of a given virtual machine, each covering a different functionality footprint.
Virtual machine instructions process data in local variables using a main model of computation
, typically that of a stack machine
, register machine
, or random access machine
often called the memory machine. Use of these three techniques is motivated by different tradeoffs in virtual machines vs physical machines, such as ease of interpretation, compilation, and verifiability for security.
Memory management
in these portable virtual machines is addressed at a higher level of abstraction than in physical machines. Some virtual machines, such as the popular JVM, are involved with addresses in such a way as to require safe automatic memory management by allowing the virtual machine to trace pointer references, and disallow machine instructions from manually constructing pointers to memory. Other virtual machines, such as LLVM, are more like traditional physical machines, allowing direct use and manipulation of pointers. CIL
offers a hybrid in between, offering both controlled use of memory (like the JVM, which allows safe automatic memory management), while also offering an 'unsafe' mode that allows direct manipulation of pointers in ways that can violate type boundaries and permission.
Code security generally refers to the ability of the portable virtual machine to run code while only offering it a prescribed set of capabilities. For example, the virtual machine might only allow the code access to a certain set of functions or data. The same controls over pointers which make automatic memory management possible and allow the virtual machine to ensure typesafe data access are used to assure that a code fragment is only allowed to certain elements of memory and cannot sidestep the virtual machine itself. Other security mechanisms are then layered on top as code verifiers, stack verifiers, and other techniques.
An interpreter
allows programs made of virtual instructions to be loaded and immediately run without a potentially costly compilation into native machine instructions. Any virtual machine which can be run can be interpreted, so the column designation here refers to whether the design includes provisions for efficient interpretation (for common usage).
Just-in-time compilation
or JIT, refers to a method of compiling to native instructions at the latest possible time, usually immediately before or during the running of the program. The challenge of JIT is more one of implementation than of virtual machine design, however, modern designs have begun to make considerations to help efficiency. The simplest JIT techniques simply perform compilation to a code-fragment similar to an offline compiler. However, more complicated techniques are often employed, which specialize compiled code-fragments to parameters that are known only at runtime (see Adaptive optimization
).
Precompiling refers to the more classical technique of using an offline compiler to generate a set of native instructions which do not change during the runtime of the program. Because aggressive compilation and optimization can take time, a precompiled program may launch faster than one which relies on JIT alone for execution. JVM implementations have mitigated this startup cost by using interpretation initially to speed launch times, until native code-fragments can be generated through JIT.
Shared libraries are a facility to reuse segments of native code across multiple running programs. In modern operating systems, this generally means using virtual memory
to share the memory pages containing a shared library across different processes which are protected from each other via memory protection
. It is interesting that aggressive JIT techniques such as adaptive optimization often produce code-fragments unsuitable for sharing across processes or successive runs of the program, requiring a tradeoff be made between the efficiencies of precompiled and shared code and the advantages of adaptively specialized code. For example, several design provisions of CIL are present to allow for efficient shared libraries, possibly at the cost of more specialized JIT code. The JVM implementation on Mac OS X
uses a Java Shared Archive (apple docs) to provide some of the benefits of shared libraries.
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
s that are typically used for allowing application bytecode
Bytecode
Bytecode, also known as p-code , is a term which has been used to denote various forms of instruction sets designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter as well as being suitable for further compilation into machine code...
to be portably run on many different computer architectures and operating systems. The application is usually run on the computer using an interpreter
Interpreter (computing)
In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language...
or just-in-time compilation
Just-in-time compilation
In computing, just-in-time compilation , also known as dynamic translation, is a method to improve the runtime performance of computer programs. Historically, computer programs had two modes of runtime operation, either interpreted or static compilation...
. There are often many implementations of a given virtual machine, each covering a different functionality footprint.
Comparison of virtual machines
The table here summarizes elements for which the virtual machine designs intended to be efficient, not the list of capabilities present in any implementation.| Virtual machine | Machine model | Memory management | Code security | Interpreter | JIT | Precompilation | Shared libraries | Common Language Object Model | Dynamic typing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CLR Common Language Runtime The Common Language Runtime is the virtual machine component of Microsoft's .NET framework and is responsible for managing the execution of .NET programs. In a process known as just-in-time compilation, the CLR compiles the intermediate language code known as CIL into the machine instructions... |
stack Stack machine A stack machine may be* A real or emulated computer that evaluates each sub-expression of a program statement via a pushdown data stack and uses a reverse Polish notation instruction set.... |
automatic or manual | |||||||
| Dis Dis virtual machine The Dis virtual machine is the execution environment for application code in the Inferno operating system. Its design is based on a register machine, closely modeling CISC-like architectures on which it runs... (Inferno Inferno (operating system) Inferno is a distributed operating system started at Bell Labs, but is now developed and maintained by Vita Nuova Holdings as free software. Inferno was based on the experience gained with Plan 9 from Bell Labs, and the further research of Bell Labs into operating systems, languages, on-the-fly... ) |
register Register machine In mathematical logic and theoretical computer science a register machine is a generic class of abstract machines used in a manner similar to a Turing machine... |
automatic | |||||||
| DotGNU DotGNU DotGNU is a part of the GNU Project that aims to provide a free software replacement for Microsoft's .NET Framework by Free Software Foundation... Portable.NET Portable.NET Part of the DotGNU project, Portable.NET is a free software and open source software initiative aiming to build a portable toolchain and runtime for Common Language Infrastructure applications. The project focuses on compatibility with the ECMA-334 and ECMA-335 standards and support for .NET's... |
stack Stack machine A stack machine may be* A real or emulated computer that evaluates each sub-expression of a program statement via a pushdown data stack and uses a reverse Polish notation instruction set.... |
automatic or manual | |||||||
| JVM Java Virtual Machine A Java virtual machine is a virtual machine capable of executing Java bytecode. It is the code execution component of the Java software platform. Sun Microsystems stated that there are over 4.5 billion JVM-enabled devices.-Overview:... |
stack Stack machine A stack machine may be* A real or emulated computer that evaluates each sub-expression of a program statement via a pushdown data stack and uses a reverse Polish notation instruction set.... |
automatic | |||||||
| JikesRVM JikesRVM Jikes RVM is a mature open source virtual machine that runs Java programs. Unlike most other JVMs it is written in Java, a style of implementation termed meta-circular.-History:... |
stack Stack machine A stack machine may be* A real or emulated computer that evaluates each sub-expression of a program statement via a pushdown data stack and uses a reverse Polish notation instruction set.... |
automatic | |||||||
| LLVM Low Level Virtual Machine The Low Level Virtual Machine is a compiler infrastructure written in C++ that is designed for compile-time, link-time, run-time, and "idle-time" optimization of programs written in arbitrary programming languages... |
register Register machine In mathematical logic and theoretical computer science a register machine is a generic class of abstract machines used in a manner similar to a Turing machine... |
manual | |||||||
| Mono Mono (software) Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime.... |
stack Stack machine A stack machine may be* A real or emulated computer that evaluates each sub-expression of a program statement via a pushdown data stack and uses a reverse Polish notation instruction set.... |
automatic or manual | |||||||
| Parrot Parrot virtual machine Parrot is a register-based process virtual machine designed to run dynamic languages efficiently. It uses just-in-time compilation for speed to reduce the interpretation overhead. It is currently possible to compile Parrot assembly language and PIR to Parrot bytecode and execute it... |
register Register machine In mathematical logic and theoretical computer science a register machine is a generic class of abstract machines used in a manner similar to a Turing machine... |
automatic | |||||||
| Dalvik Dalvik virtual machine Dalvik is the process virtual machine in Google's Android operating system. It is the software that runs the apps on Android phones. Dalvik is thus an integral part of Android, which is typically used on mobile devices such as mobile phones, tablet computers and netbooks. Programs are commonly... |
register Register machine In mathematical logic and theoretical computer science a register machine is a generic class of abstract machines used in a manner similar to a Turing machine... |
automatic | |||||||
| libJIT | stack Stack machine A stack machine may be* A real or emulated computer that evaluates each sub-expression of a program statement via a pushdown data stack and uses a reverse Polish notation instruction set.... |
manual | |||||||
| Squeak Squeak The Squeak programming language is a Smalltalk implementation. It is object-oriented, class-based and reflective.It was derived directly from Smalltalk-80 by a group at Apple Computer that included some of the original Smalltalk-80 developers... |
stack Stack machine A stack machine may be* A real or emulated computer that evaluates each sub-expression of a program statement via a pushdown data stack and uses a reverse Polish notation instruction set.... |
automatic |
Virtual machine instructions process data in local variables using a main model of computation
Model of computation
In computability theory and computational complexity theory, a model of computation is the definition of the set of allowable operations used in computation and their respective costs...
, typically that of a stack machine
Stack machine
A stack machine may be* A real or emulated computer that evaluates each sub-expression of a program statement via a pushdown data stack and uses a reverse Polish notation instruction set....
, register machine
Register machine
In mathematical logic and theoretical computer science a register machine is a generic class of abstract machines used in a manner similar to a Turing machine...
, or random access machine
Random access machine
In computer science, random access machine is an abstract machine in the general class of register machines. The RAM is very similar to the counter machine but with the added capability of 'indirect addressing' of its registers...
often called the memory machine. Use of these three techniques is motivated by different tradeoffs in virtual machines vs physical machines, such as ease of interpretation, compilation, and verifiability for security.
Memory management
Memory management
Memory management is the act of managing computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and freeing it for reuse when no longer needed. This is critical to the computer system.Several...
in these portable virtual machines is addressed at a higher level of abstraction than in physical machines. Some virtual machines, such as the popular JVM, are involved with addresses in such a way as to require safe automatic memory management by allowing the virtual machine to trace pointer references, and disallow machine instructions from manually constructing pointers to memory. Other virtual machines, such as LLVM, are more like traditional physical machines, allowing direct use and manipulation of pointers. CIL
Common Intermediate Language
Common Intermediate Language is the lowest-level human-readable programming language defined by the Common Language Infrastructure specification and is used by the .NET Framework and Mono...
offers a hybrid in between, offering both controlled use of memory (like the JVM, which allows safe automatic memory management), while also offering an 'unsafe' mode that allows direct manipulation of pointers in ways that can violate type boundaries and permission.
Code security generally refers to the ability of the portable virtual machine to run code while only offering it a prescribed set of capabilities. For example, the virtual machine might only allow the code access to a certain set of functions or data. The same controls over pointers which make automatic memory management possible and allow the virtual machine to ensure typesafe data access are used to assure that a code fragment is only allowed to certain elements of memory and cannot sidestep the virtual machine itself. Other security mechanisms are then layered on top as code verifiers, stack verifiers, and other techniques.
An interpreter
Interpreter (computing)
In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language...
allows programs made of virtual instructions to be loaded and immediately run without a potentially costly compilation into native machine instructions. Any virtual machine which can be run can be interpreted, so the column designation here refers to whether the design includes provisions for efficient interpretation (for common usage).
Just-in-time compilation
Just-in-time compilation
In computing, just-in-time compilation , also known as dynamic translation, is a method to improve the runtime performance of computer programs. Historically, computer programs had two modes of runtime operation, either interpreted or static compilation...
or JIT, refers to a method of compiling to native instructions at the latest possible time, usually immediately before or during the running of the program. The challenge of JIT is more one of implementation than of virtual machine design, however, modern designs have begun to make considerations to help efficiency. The simplest JIT techniques simply perform compilation to a code-fragment similar to an offline compiler. However, more complicated techniques are often employed, which specialize compiled code-fragments to parameters that are known only at runtime (see Adaptive optimization
Adaptive optimization
Adaptive optimization is a technique in computer science that performs dynamic recompilation of portions of a program based on the current execution profile. With a simple implementation, an adaptive optimizer may simply make a trade-off between Just-in-time compilation and interpreting instructions...
).
Precompiling refers to the more classical technique of using an offline compiler to generate a set of native instructions which do not change during the runtime of the program. Because aggressive compilation and optimization can take time, a precompiled program may launch faster than one which relies on JIT alone for execution. JVM implementations have mitigated this startup cost by using interpretation initially to speed launch times, until native code-fragments can be generated through JIT.
Shared libraries are a facility to reuse segments of native code across multiple running programs. In modern operating systems, this generally means using virtual memory
Virtual memory
In computing, virtual memory is a memory management technique developed for multitasking kernels. This technique virtualizes a computer architecture's various forms of computer data storage , allowing a program to be designed as though there is only one kind of memory, "virtual" memory, which...
to share the memory pages containing a shared library across different processes which are protected from each other via memory protection
Memory protection
Memory protection is a way to control memory access rights on a computer, and is a part of most modern operating systems. The main purpose of memory protection is to prevent a process from accessing memory that has not been allocated to it. This prevents a bug within a process from affecting...
. It is interesting that aggressive JIT techniques such as adaptive optimization often produce code-fragments unsuitable for sharing across processes or successive runs of the program, requiring a tradeoff be made between the efficiencies of precompiled and shared code and the advantages of adaptively specialized code. For example, several design provisions of CIL are present to allow for efficient shared libraries, possibly at the cost of more specialized JIT code. The JVM implementation on Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
uses a Java Shared Archive (apple docs) to provide some of the benefits of shared libraries.
List of application virtual machine implementations
In addition to the portable virtual machines described above, virtual machines are often used as an execution model for individual scripting languages, usually by an interpreter. This table lists specific virtual machine implementations, both of the above portable virtual machines, and of scripting language virtual machines.| Virtual machine | Languages | Comments | Interpreter | JIT Just-in-time compilation In computing, just-in-time compilation , also known as dynamic translation, is a method to improve the runtime performance of computer programs. Historically, computer programs had two modes of runtime operation, either interpreted or static compilation... |
Implementation Language | SLoC Source lines of code Source lines of code is a software metric used to measure the size of a software program by counting the number of lines in the text of the program's source code... |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player The Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing multimedia, Rich Internet Applications and streaming video and audio, on a computer web browser or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other... (aka Tamarin Tamarin (JavaScript engine) Tamarin is a free virtual machine with just-in-time compilation support intended to implement the fourth edition of the ECMAScript standard.... ) |
ActionScript ActionScript ActionScript is an object-oriented language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. . It is a dialect of ECMAScript , and is used primarily for the development of websites and software targeting the Adobe Flash Player platform, used on Web pages in the form of... , SWF SWF SWF is an Adobe Flash file format used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript. Originating with FutureWave Software, then transferred to Macromedia, and then coming under the control of Adobe, SWF files can contain animations or applets of varying degrees of interactivity and function.,... (file format) |
interactive web authoring tool. bytecode is named "ActionScript Byte Code (.abc)" | C++ | 135k (initially released) | ||
| BEAM | Erlang, Reia Reia (programming language) Reia is a general-purpose concurrent object-oriented programming language for the Erlang virtual machine.Reia supports multiple programming paradigms including imperative, functional, declarative, object oriented, and concurrent. It uses the actor model for concurrency in a manner that works... , Lisp Flavoured Erlang, Elixir |
There exists a native-code compiler, HiPE. | C | 247k | ||
| Clipper p-code | Clipper, Harbour Harbour compiler Harbour is a modern computer programming language. It is a Clipper-compatible compiler which is cross-platform, running on many operating systems using the same source code and databases.Although it is a... |
plankton, HVM | C | |||
| Dis Dis virtual machine The Dis virtual machine is the execution environment for application code in the Inferno operating system. Its design is based on a register machine, closely modeling CISC-like architectures on which it runs... (Inferno Inferno (operating system) Inferno is a distributed operating system started at Bell Labs, but is now developed and maintained by Vita Nuova Holdings as free software. Inferno was based on the experience gained with Plan 9 from Bell Labs, and the further research of Bell Labs into operating systems, languages, on-the-fly... ) |
Limbo | Dis Virtual Machine Specification | C | 15k + 2850 per JIT arch + 500 per host OS | ||
| DotGNU DotGNU DotGNU is a part of the GNU Project that aims to provide a free software replacement for Microsoft's .NET Framework by Free Software Foundation... /Portable.NET Portable.NET Part of the DotGNU project, Portable.NET is a free software and open source software initiative aiming to build a portable toolchain and runtime for Common Language Infrastructure applications. The project focuses on compatibility with the ECMA-334 and ECMA-335 standards and support for .NET's... |
CLI languages including: C# | Clone of Common Language Runtime | C, C# | |||
| Forth | Forth | Features are simplified, usually include assembler, compiler, text-level and binary-level interpreters, sometimes editor, debugger and OS. Compilation speeds are >20 SKLOC/S and behave much like JIT. | Forth, Forth Assembler | 2.8K to 5.6K; advanced, professional implementations are smaller. | ||
| Glulx Glulx Glulx is a 32-bit portable virtual machine intended for writing and playing interactive fiction. It was designed by Andrew Plotkin to relieve some of the restrictions in the venerable Z-machine format... |
Glulx Glulx Glulx is a 32-bit portable virtual machine intended for writing and playing interactive fiction. It was designed by Andrew Plotkin to relieve some of the restrictions in the venerable Z-machine format... , Z-code Z-machine The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions , and could therefore port all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a... |
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| Icon | Icon | |||||
| JVM Java Virtual Machine A Java virtual machine is a virtual machine capable of executing Java bytecode. It is the code execution component of the Java software platform. Sun Microsystems stated that there are over 4.5 billion JVM-enabled devices.-Overview:... |
Java Java (programming language) Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities... , Jython Jython Jython, successor of JPython, is an implementation of the Python programming language written in Java.-Overview:Jython programs can seamlessly import and use any Java class. Except for some standard modules, Jython programs use Java classes instead of Python modules... , Groovy, JRuby JRuby JRuby is a Java implementation of the Ruby programming language, being developed by the JRuby team. It is free software released under a three-way CPL/GPL/LGPL license... , C C (programming language) C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system.... , C++ C++ C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell... , Clojure Clojure Clojure |closure]]") is a recent dialect of the Lisp programming language created by Rich Hickey. It is a general-purpose language supporting interactive development that encourages a functional programming style, and simplifies multithreaded programming.... , Scala and several others |
Reference implementation by Sun ; OpenJDK OpenJDK OpenJDK is a free and open source implementation of the Java programming language. It is the result of an effort Sun Microsystems began in 2006... : code under GPL ; IcedTea IcedTea IcedTea is a build and integration project for OpenJDK launched by Red Hat in June 2007. The initial goal was to make the Java OpenJDK software which Sun Microsystems released as free software in 2007 usable without requiring any other software that is not free software and hence make it possible... : code and tools under GPL |
JDK, OpenJDK OpenJDK OpenJDK is a free and open source implementation of the Java programming language. It is the result of an effort Sun Microsystems began in 2006... & IcedTea IcedTea IcedTea is a build and integration project for OpenJDK launched by Red Hat in June 2007. The initial goal was to make the Java OpenJDK software which Sun Microsystems released as free software in 2007 usable without requiring any other software that is not free software and hence make it possible... with regular JIT : Java, C, ASM ; IcedTea IcedTea IcedTea is a build and integration project for OpenJDK launched by Red Hat in June 2007. The initial goal was to make the Java OpenJDK software which Sun Microsystems released as free software in 2007 usable without requiring any other software that is not free software and hence make it possible... with the "Zero" JIT : Java, C |
JVM is around 6500k lines; TCK Technology Compatibility Kit A Technology Compatibility Kit is a suite of tests that at least nominally checks a particular alleged implementation of a Java Specification Request for compliance... is 80k tests and around 1000k lines |
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| LLVM Low Level Virtual Machine The Low Level Virtual Machine is a compiler infrastructure written in C++ that is designed for compile-time, link-time, run-time, and "idle-time" optimization of programs written in arbitrary programming languages... |
C C (programming language) C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system.... , C++ C++ C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell... , Objective-C Objective-C Objective-C is a reflective, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language.Today, it is used primarily on Apple's Mac OS X and iOS: two environments derived from the OpenStep standard, though not compliant with it... , Ada Ada (programming language) Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, wide-spectrum, and object-oriented high-level computer programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages... , and Fortran Fortran Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing... |
MSIL, C and C++ output are supported. ActionScript Byte Code output is supported by Adobe Alchemy. bytecode is named "LLVM Bytecode (.bc)". assembly is named "LLVM Assembly Language (*.ll)". | C++ | 811k | ||
| Lua | Lua | LuaJIT | C | 13k + 7k LuaJIT | ||
| MMIX MMIX MMIX is a 64-bit RISC instruction set architecture designed by Donald Knuth, with significant contributions by John L. Hennessy and Richard L. Sites... |
MMIX MMIX MMIX is a 64-bit RISC instruction set architecture designed by Donald Knuth, with significant contributions by John L. Hennessy and Richard L. Sites... AL |
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| Mono Mono (software) Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime.... |
CLI languages including: C#, VB.NET, IronPython IronPython IronPython is an implementation of the Python programming language targeting the .NET Framework and Mono. Jim Hugunin created the project and actively contributed to it up until Version 1.0 which was released on September 5, 2006. Thereafter, it was maintained by a small team at Microsoft until... , IronRuby IronRuby IronRuby is an implementation of the Ruby programming language targeting Microsoft .NET framework. It is implemented on top of the Dynamic Language Runtime , a library running on top of the Common Language Infrastructure that provides dynamic typing and dynamic method dispatch, among other things,... , and others |
clone of Common Language Runtime. | C#, C | 2332k | ||
| Oz Mozart Programming System The Mozart Programming System is a multiplatform implementation of the Oz programming language developed by an international group, the Mozart Consortium, which originally consisted of Saarland University, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, and the Université catholique de Louvain.Mozart... |
Oz Oz (programming language) Oz is a multiparadigm programming language, developed in the Programming Systems Lab at Université catholique de Louvain, for programming language education. It has a canonical textbook: Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming.... , Alice Alice (programming language) Alice ML is a functional programming language designed by the at Saarland University. It is a dialect of Standard ML, augmented with support for lazy evaluation, concurrency and constraint programming.-Overview:Alice extends Standard ML in a number of ways that distinguish it from its predecessor... |
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| NekoVM | currently Neko and haXe HaXe haXe is a versatile open-source high-level multiplatform programming language described on its website as a "universal language".It can produce:* Flash applications and games* Multi-platform client-side web applications* Apache CGI web applications... |
x86 only | C | 46k | ||
| O-code machine O-code machine The O-code machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Martin Richards in the late 1960s to give machine independence to BCPL, the low-level forerunner to C and C++. The concept behind the O-Code machine was to create O-code output through the BCPL compiler. The O-code was then either... |
BCPL BCPL BCPL is a procedural, imperative, and structured computer programming language designed by Martin Richards of the University of Cambridge in 1966.- Design :... |
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| p-code machine P-Code machine In computer programming, a p-code machine, or portable code machine is a virtual machine designed to execute p-code... |
Pascal Pascal (programming language) Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal... |
UCSD Pascal, widespread in late 70s including Apple II | ||||
| Parrot Parrot virtual machine Parrot is a register-based process virtual machine designed to run dynamic languages efficiently. It uses just-in-time compilation for speed to reduce the interpretation overhead. It is currently possible to compile Parrot assembly language and PIR to Parrot bytecode and execute it... |
Perl (6 Perl 6 Perl 6 is a major revision to the Perl programming language. It is still in development, as a specification from which several interpreter and compiler implementations are being written. It is introducing elements of many modern and historical languages. Perl 6 is intended to have many... & 5), NQP-rx, PIR, PASM, PBC Bytecode Bytecode, also known as p-code , is a term which has been used to denote various forms of instruction sets designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter as well as being suitable for further compilation into machine code... , BASIC BASIC BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.... , bc Bc programming language bc, for bench calculator, is "an arbitrary precision calculator language" with syntax similar to the C programming language. bc is typically used as either a mathematical scripting language or as an interactive mathematical shell.... , C C99 C99 is a modern dialect of the C programming language. It extends the previous version with new linguistic and library features, and helps implementations make better use of available computer hardware and compiler technology.-History:... , ECMAScript ECMAScript ECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.- History :JavaScript... , Lisp, Lua, m4 GNU m4 GNU m4 is the GNU version of the m4 macro preprocessor. It is designed to avoid many kinds of limits found in traditional m4s: limits like maximum line lengths, maximum size of a macro, number of macros, etc... , Tcl Tcl Tcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own... , WMLScript WMLScript WMLScript is the dialect of JavaScript used for WML pages and is part of the Wireless Application Protocol .WMLScript is a client-side scripting language and is very similar to JavaScript... , XML, and others |
C, Perl | 111k C, 240k Perl | |||
| Perl virtual machine Perl virtual machine The Perl virtual machine is a stack-based process virtual machine implemented as an opcodes interpreter which runs previously compiled Perl programs... |
Perl Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular... |
op-code tree walker | C, Perl | 175k C, 9k Perl | ||
| CPython CPython CPython is the default, most-widely used implementation of the Python programming language. It is written in C. In addition to CPython, there are two other production-quality Python implementations: Jython, written in Java, and IronPython, which is written for the Common Language Runtime. There... |
Python Python (programming language) Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive... |
Psyco Psyco Psyco is a specializing just-in-time compiler for Python originally developed by Armin Rigo and further maintained and developed by Christian Tismer.... |
C | 387k C, 368k Python, 10k ASM, 31k Psyco | ||
| PyPy PyPy PyPy is a Python interpreter and JIT compiler. PyPy focuses on speed, efficiency and 100% compatibility with the original CPython interpreter.- Details and motivation :... |
Python Python (programming language) Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive... |
Self-hosting Self-hosting The term self-hosting was coined to refer to the use of a computer program as part of the toolchain or operating system that produces new versions of that same program—for example, a compiler that can compile its own source code. Self-hosting software is commonplace on personal computers and larger... implementation of Python, next generation of Psyco Psyco Psyco is a specializing just-in-time compiler for Python originally developed by Armin Rigo and further maintained and developed by Christian Tismer.... |
Python | |||
| Rubinius Rubinius Rubinius is an alternative Ruby programming language implementation created by Evan Phoenix. Based loosely on the Smalltalk-80 Blue Book design, Rubinius seeks to"provide a rich, high-performance environment for running Ruby code."-Goals:... |
Ruby Ruby (programming language) Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto... |
Virtual machine for another Ruby Ruby (programming language) Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto... implementation |
C++, Ruby | |||
| Silverlight | C#, VB.NET | A Micro-version of Microsoft .NET Framework to allo applications run sandboxed inside browser | C++ | 7MB (initially released) | ||
| SEAM | Alice Alice (programming language) Alice ML is a functional programming language designed by the at Saarland University. It is a dialect of Standard ML, augmented with support for lazy evaluation, concurrency and constraint programming.-Overview:Alice extends Standard ML in a number of ways that distinguish it from its predecessor... |
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| ScummVM ScummVM ScummVM is a collection of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system , it now also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies like Revolution Software and Adventure Soft. It was originally written by Ludvig Strigeus... |
Scumm SCUMM Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion is a scripting language developed at LucasArts to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion.... |
Computer game engine | ||||
| SECD SECD machine The SECD machine is a highly influential virtual machine and abstract machine intended as a target for functional programming language compilers. The letters stand for Stack, Environment, Code, Dump, the internal registers of the machine... |
ISWIM ISWIM ISWIM is an abstract computer programming language devised by Peter J. Landin and first described in his article, The Next 700 Programming Languages, published in the Communications of the ACM in 1966... , Lispkit Lisp Lispkit Lisp Lispkit Lisp is a lexically scoped, purely functional subset of Lisp developed as a testbed for functional programming concepts. It was first used for early experimentation with lazy evaluation. An SECD machine-based implementation written in an ALGOL variant was published by the developer Peter... |
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| Squirrel | Squirrel | Squirrel_JIT | C++ | 12k | ||
| Smalltalk Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist... |
Smalltalk Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist... |
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| SQLite SQLite SQLite is an ACID-compliant embedded relational database management system contained in a relatively small C programming library. The source code for SQLite is in the public domain and implements most of the SQL standard... |
SQLite opcodes | Virtual database engine | ||||
| Squeak Squeak The Squeak programming language is a Smalltalk implementation. It is object-oriented, class-based and reflective.It was derived directly from Smalltalk-80 by a group at Apple Computer that included some of the original Smalltalk-80 developers... |
Squeak Squeak The Squeak programming language is a Smalltalk implementation. It is object-oriented, class-based and reflective.It was derived directly from Smalltalk-80 by a group at Apple Computer that included some of the original Smalltalk-80 developers... Smalltalk Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist... |
Self hosting implementation of Squeak Squeak The Squeak programming language is a Smalltalk implementation. It is object-oriented, class-based and reflective.It was derived directly from Smalltalk-80 by a group at Apple Computer that included some of the original Smalltalk-80 developers... virtual machine. Rich multi-media support. |
Smalltalk/Slang | 110k Smalltalk, ~300K C | ||
| TaoGroup VP/VP2 | C, Java | Proprietary embedded VM | ||||
| TraceMonkey | JavaScript | Based on Tamarin Tamarin (JavaScript engine) Tamarin is a free virtual machine with just-in-time compilation support intended to implement the fourth edition of the ECMAScript standard.... |
C++ | 173k | ||
| Flat File Tables/Global C++ variable declarations | IDE, programming by demonstration | |||||
| TrueType TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript... |
TrueType | Font rendering engine | C (typically) | |||
| Valgrind Valgrind Valgrind is a GPL licensed programming tool for memory debugging, memory leak detection, and profiling. The name valgrind comes from the main entrance to Valhalla in Norse mythology.... |
x86/x86-64 X86-64 x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other... binaries |
Checking of memory accesses and leaks under Linux Linux Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds... |
C | 467k | ||
| VisualWorks VisualWorks VisualWorks is a cross-platform implementation of the Smalltalk language. It is implemented as a development system based on "images", which are dynamic collections of software objects, each contained in a system image.... |
Smalltalk Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist... |
C | ||||
| VMKit | JVM and CLI virtual machine based on LLVM. | |||||
| Vx32 virtual machine VX32 The Vx32 virtual extension environment is an application-level virtual machine implemented as an ordinary user-mode library and designed to run native x86 code... |
Application-level virtualization for native code | |||||
| Waba SuperWaba SuperWaba is a discontinued Java-like virtual machine that targets portable devices. Software developers use application programming interfaces , accessed through associated libraries and small tools , to create applications that can run within the VM on supported platforms.-Architecture:The... |
Virtual machine for small devices, similar to Java Java (programming language) Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities... |
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| Yet Another Ruby VM (YARV) YARV YARV is a bytecode interpreter that was developed for the Ruby programming language by Koichi Sasada. The goal of the project was to greatly reduce the execution time of Ruby programs.... |
Ruby Ruby (programming language) Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto... |
Virtual machine of the reference implementation for Ruby Ruby (programming language) Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto... 1.9 and newer versions |
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| Z-machine Z-machine The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions , and could therefore port all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a... |
Z-Code Z-machine The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions , and could therefore port all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a... |
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| Zend Engine Zend engine The Zend Engine is an open source scripting engine , commonly known for the important role it plays in the web automation language PHP. It was originally developed by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski while they were students at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. They later founded a... |
PHP PHP PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document... |
C | 75k | |||
| libJIT Library for Just-In-Time compilation | Common Intermediate Language Common Intermediate Language Common Intermediate Language is the lowest-level human-readable programming language defined by the Common Language Infrastructure specification and is used by the .NET Framework and Mono... Java bytecode Java bytecode Java bytecode is the form of instructions that the Java virtual machine executes. Each bytecode opcode is one byte in length, although some require parameters, resulting in some multi-byte instructions. Not all of the possible 256 opcodes are used. 51 are reserved for future use... Domain-specific programming language |
Virtual machine is used in Portable.NET Just-In-Time compiler, ILDJIT, HornetsEye | C, ia32, arm, amd64, alpha, low-level CPU architecture specific machine code | |||
See also
- Application virtualizationApplication VirtualizationApplication virtualization is an umbrella term that describes software technologies that improve portability, manageability and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in...
- Language bindingLanguage bindingIn computing, a binding from a programming language to a library or OS service is an API providing that service in the language.Many software libraries are written in systems programming languages such as C or C++...
- Foreign function interfaceForeign function interfaceA foreign function interface is a mechanism by which a program written in one programming language can call routines or make use of services written in another. The term comes from the specification for Common Lisp, which explicitly refers to the language features for inter-language calls as...
- Calling conventionCalling conventionIn computer science, a calling convention is a scheme for how subroutines receive parameters from their caller and how they return a result; calling conventions can differ in:...
- Name manglingName manglingIn compiler construction, name mangling is a technique used to solve various problems caused by the need to resolve unique names for programming entities in many modern programming languages....
- Application programming interfaceApplication programming interfaceAn application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
(API) - Application Binary InterfaceApplication binary interfaceIn computer software, an application binary interface describes the low-level interface between an application program and the operating system or another application.- Description :...
(ABI) - Comparison of platform virtual machines