[LLVMdev] Virtrual instruction set was: re:compile linux kernel

[Samuel Crow]

Hello Jonathan,

Actually it is the second project that I know of that used the term Virtual to describe the intermediate instruction set.  Virtual Processor was part of a failed attempt by the Tao Group and Amiga Inc. to bring a common set of runtimes and instruction sets to handheld devices (called AmigaDE).  Later, certain optimizations appeared in Java allowing it to catch on instead.  In an effort to minimize their losses, Amiga released a subset of it with a hosted operating system called AmigaAnywhere and a few titles were released on it.

To make a long story short, VP Assembler was replaced by some GCC cross-compilers and renamed AmigaAnywhere 2.0 .  For more information about this, refer to http://amiga.com/developers/ .

This is trivia however as there isn't even a Wikipedia article about VP Assembler now.

--Sam

--- On Mon, 9/29/08, Jonathan S. Shapiro <shap at eros-os.com> wrote:

> From: Jonathan S. Shapiro <shap at eros-os.com>
> Subject: Re: [LLVMdev] compile linux kernel
> To: "LLVM Developers Mailing List" <llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu>
> Date: Monday, September 29, 2008, 4:53 AM
> Watching this thread, it occurs to me that the "V"
> in "LLVM" is creating
> confusion. So far as I know, LLVM is the first project to
> use "virtual"
> to refer to the instruction set of the intermediate form. I
> understand
> why this labeling made sense (sort of), but it was
> unfortunate. The
> machine is abstract, not virtual, and the use of
> "virtual" here is so
> out of keeping with any other use of the term that it
> really does
> generate confusion.
> 
> Is this worth a FAQ entry?
> 
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