For Java, this was around for a bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle.

Even better was a complete system rather than a mode for arm processors that ran a subset of the common jvm opcodes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PicoJava

Didn't some phones have hardware Java execution or does my memory fail me?

It's called Jazelle.

Sun tried to build one too, they called it the JavaChip iirc. It was meant for JavaStations, kiosk machines, and mobile phones but it never took off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_processor

No. There where Motorola phones with Motorola processors with Java Co-Processor. Not Jazelle.

Yes. I known at least one Motorola phone which had a co-processor for Java (not Jazelle)

Does anyone remember the JavaOne ring giveaway?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8598037

Java got that with smart cards for example. Cute oddities of the past

JavaCard was just implemented as just a regular interpreter last time I checked.

In university, for my undergrad thesis, I wanted to do this for a Befunge variant (choosing the character set to simplify instruction decoding). My supervisor insisted on something more practical, though. :(

I probably should have added a link: https://esolangs.org/wiki/Befunge

The main thing that appealed to me about this idea is that it would require a two-dimensional program counter. As I recall from the original specification, skipping through blank space is supposed to take O(1) time, but I didn't plan on implementing that. I did, however, imagine a machine with 256x256 bytes of memory, where some 80x25 (or 24?) region was reserved as directly memory-mapped to a character display (and protected at boot by surrounding it with jump instructions).

I want to say there was a product that did this circa 2006-2008 but all I’m finding is the .NET Micro Framework and its modern successor the .NET nano Framework.

I’ve been using .NET since 2001 so maybe I have it confused with something else, but at the same time a lot of the web from that era is just gone, so it’s possible something like this did exist but didn’t gain any traction and is now lost to the ether.

Maybe you’re thinking of Singularity OS?

There was Netduino, but that was a STM32 microcontroller running an interpreter, not dedicated hardware which directly executed CLR code.

The tl;dr (I spent lots of time investigating this) is that it just fundamentally isn’t a good bytecode for execution. It’s designed to be small on disk, not hardware friendly

I'd be surprised if azure app services didn't do this already.

I’d be willing to bet my net worth that they don’t

then why does azure app services have you pick the .net version?!

I can't tell if this is joke but will assume not. It's because the .net version is needed for some reason. There are not processors that run .net bytecode, primarily because they would be slower and worse (and again, don't exist)

Wouldn't that be a real scoop?

Azure runs on Linux if I'm not mistaken.

Nope.

Can you tell me how I'm misunderstanding this?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Linux?utm_source=chatg...