Java processor

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Processor using Java bytecode as its instruction set

title: "Java processor" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["java-virtual-machine", "high-level-language-computer-architecture"] description: "Processor using Java bytecode as its instruction set" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_processor" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Processor using Java bytecode as its instruction set ::

A Java processor is the implementation of the Java virtual machine (JVM) in hardware. In other words, the Java bytecode that makes up the instruction set of the abstract machine becomes the instruction set of a concrete machine. These were the most popular form of a high-level language computer architecture, and were "an attractive choice for building embedded and real-time systems that are programmed in Java". However, as of 2017, embedded Java is no longer common and no realtime Java chip vendors exist.

Implementations

There are several research Java processors tested on FPGA, including:

picoJava was the first attempt to build a Java processor, by Sun Microsystems. Its successor picoJava-II was freely available under the Sun Community Source License, and is still available from some archives.
provides hardware support for object-oriented functions
Java Optimized Processor for FPGAs. A PhD thesis is available, and it has been used in several commercial applications.

Some commercial implementations included:

The aJile processor was the most successful ASIC Java processor.
Cjip from Imsys Technologies. Available on boards and with wireless radios from AVIDwireless"Imsys hedges bets on Java: rewritable-microcode chip has instruction sets for Java, Forth, C/C++"] by Tom R. Halfhill http://www.imsystech.com/press_room/press_archive/press_micro_p_report.pdf
ARM926EJ-S was an ARM processor able to run Java bytecode, this technology being named Jazelle.

References

(September 2008). "2008 Fifth International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of Systems".
"Systronix Home".
(2006). "A Java processor with hardware-support object-oriented instructions". Microprocessors and Microsystems.
(2008). "A Java processor architecture for embedded real-time systems". Journal of Systems Architecture.
(2019). "Architecture of Computing Systems – ARCS 2019".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::