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From: papresco@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: Will Java VM kill Lisp?  How to fight it.
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Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 12:06:58 GMT
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In article <5ibnqp$pbm$1@news3.texas.net>,
David Gadbois <gadbois@cyc.com> wrote:
>1. CPU architecture does not matter as much as it used to and will
>matter less in the future.  Memory speed increases have not kept up
>with CPU ones, and the trend is likely to continue.  

That's exactly the problem. The JVM does not allow efficient memory use
in Java programs.

>2. I have not seen any proposals for "Java" CPUs that only implement
>the Java Virtual Machine.  Rather, they have support for some of the
>JVM instructions in addition to "normal" instructions.  After all,
>they have to be able to run those massive libraries well, and
>implementing them requires things you can't do in the JVM.

Great. So when you ship your Lisp in JVM code over the Internet, how do you 
get access to those other instructions?

>3. Given current technology constraints, I can't think of a good
>excuse to do a special Java-supporting CPU for execution speed
>reasons.  It is justifiable for bumming system cost or power
>consumption, or even for marketing communications reasons.  But it
>does not make much business sense to go for Java-specific features in
>the performance market.

It doesn't really matter. If most code runs in a JVM on top of other
processors, it will be slow if the JVM does not support Lisp 
constructs efficiently. Who cares what the actual CPU looks like?

 Paul Prescod

