The strange case of virtual machines on telephones

Re:The strange case of virtual machines on telephones by jacquesm on Thursday August 26, 2010 @05:39PM (#1637240)

Funny, I think mobile phones are one of the few places where VMs actually make a whole lot of sense, given that you'll need to keep your applications compatible with whatever CPU happens to run generation 'X' of the phones out there, today, and more importantly, in the future.

Like this manufacturers are not restricted by backwards compatibility. All they have to do is guarantee that the VM will work as advertised and in a compatible way.

All the apps are then automatically available for the new processor platform.

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Re:The strange case of virtual machines on telephones by wmf on Thursday August 26, 2010 @06:06PM (#1637295)

Yeah, those phones keep switching processors. They used to use ARM, but then they switched to, uh...

Processor portability? YAGNI.

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Re:The strange case of virtual machines on telephones by nl on Thursday August 26, 2010 @07:37PM (#1637522)

Ah, but Android isn't just phones!

Settop Boxes (MIPS): http://www.mips.com/android/ (There's also a new MIPS chipset aimed at smartphones: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Android-mobile-device...)

Netbooks (Intel): http://liliputing.com/2010/08/toshiba-ac100-android-netbook-...

And then there is the whole Chinese ecosystem of Android (and Android forks?) on Loongson processors. I don't know a lot about this, but here's an example: http://www.netbooknews.de/12409/lemote-open-source-netbook-m...

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Re:The strange case of virtual machines on telephones by vetinari on Friday August 27, 2010 @07:21AM (#1638486)

Just because they are ARM, does not mean they are the same.

When taking iPhones into account, you must build for ARM6 and ARM7. On Android and native code, situation is the same: G1/myTouch is CPU-wise another ARM than Nexus One, which is different than Galaxy S.

The bytecode solves nicely this problem now, as in You Needed It Yesterday Already.

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Re:The strange case of virtual machines on telephones by ergo98 on Thursday August 26, 2010 @06:16PM (#1637317)

http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2010/05/05/intel-moorestown-mee...

Indeed.

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Re:The strange case of virtual machines on telephones by wmf on Thursday August 26, 2010 @06:36PM (#1637366)

I'll believe this when it actually ships. Also, there's a kind of karmic justice to see Intel on the losing side of an instruction set monopoly.

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