VM

The topic of all Virtual Machines reviewed:

• .NET VM - A concrete VM inspired by a Microsoft proprietary VM (.Net) with an open published standard (ECMA 335, see below); it provides a means for loosely combining languages through a "Common Language Infrastructure" (CLI) in which applications written in multiple high-level languages may be executed in different system environments without porting
• ANDF - Architecture Neutral Distribution Format, a technology for portable binary code distribution is a concrete VM developed by the OSF
• Blue Calculus - The Blue Calculus is a Pi Calculus variant by Gérard Boudol
• bytecode - A machine-independent way of representing a compiled application
• C-- - A portable assembly programming language, hence also a concrete VM; it is significant in being a variant of the C language that is much easier to generate code for, but it is not a sub or superset of C, however
• Categorical Abstract Machine - Categorical Abstract Machine is a Concrete VM, based on the idea of categorical combinators; see Category Theory 101
• Fusion Calculus - Fusion Calculus is yet another nicer variant of the Pi calculus, an abstract VM for parallel, mobile computations, for expressing concurrency
• GENS - GENS is a calculus (an abstract VM) of explicit lexical environments by Mario Blazevic?; on top of GENS, you can implement the lambda calculus, your favorite object-oriented languages, etc
• Geometry of Interaction Machine - The Geometry of Interaction Machine, aka GOI Machine is an abstract VM which achieve evaluation of terms without performing term reduction, by following the path in the graph of the redex that would be extracted by reduction
• Guile VM - The GNU project's Guile has some very interesting approaches for a concrete VM
• HOPE - HOPE at the Oregon Institute of Science and Technology, a set of primitives on top of an concrete VM, for optimistic programming, i
• Intel 8086 - The most infamous proprietary VM in computer history, that throttled for so many years advances in computer technology, has been the i8086 instruction set, upon which the "PC-compatible" computers were built
• Join Calculus - The Join Calculus is a kind of declarative model (an abstract VM) of Actors, supporting type-safe distributed programming and expressing concurrency
• Juice - A portable code infrastructure (which counts as its own concrete VM type) which could be said to store a dataflow tree as might be created by a powerful compiler
• JVM - The infamous Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is a concrete VM introduced by Sun as a standard compact (so they say) low-level representation for programs written in Java
• Lambda VM - Lambda calculus is not only an abstract calculus, but an Abstract VM: a kind of calculus of very basic abstraction
• LLVM - A concrete VM that is also a compilation strategy, a virtual instruction set, and a compiler infrastructure
• Lunacy - A concrete VM/compiler for the 'diamond-like' core of the Scheme programming language:
• nitrOVM - A concrete VM implementation that uses reflection in order to build an extensible and adaptable computational system
• Open Firmware - Open Firmware (OF) is a Forth-based concrete VM centered around building and maintaining a portable boot interface across several architectures
• Parrot - A concrete VM designed to provide a low-level common platform for Perl 6, Python, Ruby, TCL, and other mostly-interpreted languages
• Pi Calculus - Pi calculus is an abstract VM for parallel, mobile computations; for expressing concurrency
• PVM - An acronym for Parallel Virtual Machine, a concrete VM
• SECD - SECD is an extremely simple concrete VM for functional programming, including the use of Lisp
• Squeak VM - Squeak includes a free concrete VM used to implement a Smalltalk-80 superset, including full source in Smalltalk and a reduced Smalltalk-to-C translator
• TAOS VM - Despite the hype, it seems that the TAOS VP (virtual processor), as used in the Tao OS is just a proprietary variation on the ANDF idea
• TIGRE - An acronym for Threaded Interpretive Graph Reduction Engine, a concrete VM described in Philip J. Koopman, Jr. Ph
• Tube - A project developing methods of migration through reflection using an extended Scheme as both an Abstract VM and a Concrete VM: Scheme code with mobility primitives is metaprogrammed into normal Scheme code plus threading and networking
• Turing Machine - The first virtual machine (an abstract VM) successfully designed to embody universal computations is the Turing Machine
• UCSD P-Code - Was a concrete VM of historical note as an early OS for some microcomputers; it was based on Pascal's operational model, and implemented in UCSD Pascal - which was also the most used language on the platform
• Unity Project - An concrete VM written in C/C++ designed to provide basic abstractions for scripting with a programming language, using network connectivity transparently, some persistence, and security through ACLs
• Warren Abstract Machine - Prolog's WAM, a concrete VM to support efficient Prolog compilation

This page is linked from: C Compiler dlopen VM   Dolphin   Forth   Guile VM   IL   Java   KangaroOS   Language Implementation   Mozart/Oz   Platform OS   Python   Smalltalk   Squeak   Squeak VM   Tube   Virtual Machines