Java Bytecode

References

(Wikipedia, 2013) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/java_bytecode Retrieved:2013-12-13.
- Java bytecode is the form of instructions that the Java virtual machine executes. Each bytecode opcode is one byte in length, although some require parameters, resulting in some multi-byte instructions. Not all of the possible 256 opcodes are used. 51 are reserved for future use. Beyond that, Sun Microsystems, the original developer of the Java platform, had set aside three values to be permanently unimplemented.^[1]

(Chow, 2013) ⇒ Fred Chow. (2013). “Intermediate Representation.” In: Queue Journal, 11(10). doi:10.1145/2542661.2544374
- QUOTE: Java bytecode is the first example of an IR with an open standard definition that is independent of compilers, because JVM is so widely accepted that it has spawned numerous compiler and VM implementations. The prevalence of JVM has led to many other languages being translated to Java bytecode,^[1] but because it was originally defined to serve only the Java language, support for high-level abstractions not present in Java is either not straightforward or absent. This lack of generality limits the use of Java bytecode as a universal IR.