A Java processor with hardware-support object-oriented instructions

Java is widely applied from the small embedded devices to enterprise systems nowadays due to its object-oriented features and corresponding advantages of security, robustness, and platform independence. Java programs are compiled into Java Bytecodes, which are executed in the Java virtual machine. Among the current hardware or software solutions to the Java virtual machine, the object-oriented related Bytecodes are implemented by software traps or microcode, and their performance does not match well with the essential requirements of memory-constraint embedded devices, such as real-time operations and low power consumptions. In this paper, a novel Java processor named jHISC is proposed, which mainly targets Java applications in the small embedded devices. In jHISC, 94% of Bytecodes and 83% of the object-oriented related Bytecodes are implemented by hardware directly. Compared with PicoJava II and JOP, jHISC speeds up the overall performance about 30% and 183%, respectively. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.