Bytecode and the Busicom (2022)

thechipletter.substack.com

> The major surprise is that the 1K of ROM memory implements a simple ‘virtual machine’. This machine in turn performs the arithmetic and other calculations needed by the 141-PF.

This is reminiscent of Steve Wozniak's Sweet 16 VM, for the 6502/Apple II.

Wozniak worked on calculators at HP.

Maybe the technique was known in the calculator circles?

From info in the Busicom Wikipedia page, I'm guessing that VM might have been the brainchild of either Ted Hoff or Frederico Faggin, or both.

The link came (indirectly) from a story about virtual machines https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37867144 which has a lot of good tidbits. It's fair to say that the idea of virtual machines is very old, and probably a very natural one.

A bunch of articles like this should be required reading for CS students.

To put their feet on the ground w/ respect to frugal use of compute & memory resources.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com