AS/400?

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Wed Aug 9 21:23:11 2000

I wrote:
> The "MI" layer, which is the lowest supported "machine code" level of
> the AS/400 (sort of like P-code or Java bytecodes) is very CISCy, but
> that's implemented in software on both CISC and RISC AS/400s.

I should probably further add that the MI layer is translated into
native code, so there generally isn't a performance penalty for
interpretation. The point is, however, that IBM does not support users
writing actual machine code on the AS/400 boxes. Also, the MI code is
portable across all AS/400 models, while the internal code is not.
Received on Wed Aug 09 2000 - 21:23:11 BST