Today I was made aware that Intel is amidst an initiative to create chips capable of interpreting Java byte-code in the same way a normal ship would interpret assembly. Now I really don't know much about chips but upon hearing this I thought to myself "Wow... that's really going to make Java's performance skyrocket past .NET's." I mentioned this to one of my trainer instructors (I'm still in training at work) who in turn told me he didn't believe this was such a big deal or a big gain for Java. I was shocked to hear that but I listened to his justification which makes sense but again I don't know much about chips. His basic concept was two-fold: 1) What's the performance gain over having the byte-code compiled to native code at install time? 2) Any performance gain that the JITter might introduce with runtime optimization would be missed. Another training instructor put his two cents in as well but he was more on the side that having hardware capable of bypassing the JITter would improve performance.
I was under the impression that having hardware with these capabilities would unquestionably make Java's speed a force to be reckoned with. I do however see the point that it really doesn't seem to buy you much over having byte-code compiled down to native code at install time.
Does anyone know if there are any initiatives of this kind for IL? Does the skeptical instructor have a valid point? General feedback anyone?
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