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Comment by silversmith | Hacker News Reader

What caught my eye was "removes (...) Java VM" - I had imagined the ME to be some kind of very basic maintenance task runner, not a full-blown dynamic app environment.

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Same here. I was like "what, there's a JVM in there?". But then again, apparently there's a JVM in most (all?) SIM cards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card)

Before Java card, all smartcards were programmed in assembly, Each brand incompatible with others. And even if smartcards were introduced as security devices, their "security" was actually a joke.

Then there was an effort to create a secure interoperable platform for smartcards, it was Global Platform and it uses Java card for implementing their goals. All post 2000 smartcards are compatible with GP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalPlatform

I wonder if it really needs the JVM in the chip. It could just contain the compiled bytecode and the phone could have a JVM that runs the bytecode.

The whole point of the smartcard is that the outside world cannot access its memories other than through services running on the card.

There are tons of tiny JVMs.

How adorable

So that's why they're so damn slow.

It's a mutant version of Java though...

https://youtu.be/WMII5G98AdM?t=608 (skipped to the part where he mentions that it's Java)

Intel ME runs MINIX[1], and one of it's applications is a JVM with some things running on top. It's pretty insane.

[1]: https://firmwaresecurity.com/2017/05/07/intel-me-based-on-mi...

Minix? Are you kidding me? That is amazingly funny and depressing at the same time. So Andy Tanenbaum got the last laugh on Linus after all. Thanks to this ME garbage, Minix is running simultaneously on the same hardware as the vast majority of modern of Linux machines. Cue Alanis Morissette.

Some background, for anyone not familiar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...

Linux still wins by a landslide by also running on billions of ARM cellphones that don't have IME chips.

That being said, it is also reasonable to expect a lot of modems, RAM, and hard drives could use MINIX for their control processors.

Those ARM cellphones are running a micro-kernel OS (OKL4) on their baseband processors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Kernel_Labs

It's basically a tiny computer, with its own OS. Seeing JVM is used on it through, yea, that's surprising. I guess it was cheaper to beef up the IME to run Java than it was to hire someone to re-code whatever functionality the java app(s) provide.

(Edit, in response to all of the comments in reply to this) Wow, I had no idea so many tiny devices ran java..

JVMs can be simple and tiny. Pre-smartphone handsets run Java apps on 20Mhz 32-bit ARM application processors. Some of the JVMs are so simple there is no thread preemption - just round-robin. A 64kb jar is big for that kind of device.

Yubikey Neo seems to run Java as well [1] [2]. I guess there was a good reason why Schwartz renamed SUNW to JAVA.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/yubikey/comments/6ji8ag/updating_yu...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card

Every modern credit/debit/EC card, and every modern ID card also runs Java – in fact, that’s how the smart functionality in ID cards, drivers licenses and insurance cards is implemented: http://www.personalausweisportal.de/EN/Citizens/German_ID_Ca...

Huh, TIL. I do recall some old devices from Nokia using JVM, but never realized that the IME is probably more powerful than those old phones!

write once, spy everywhere.

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