picoJava is a microprocessor specification dedicated to native execution of Java bytecode without the need for an interpreter or just-in-time compilation. The aim is to speed bytecode execution up by up to 20 times, compared to standard Intel CPU with a Java virtual machine. GNU
Picojava was developed by Sun Microsystems, the first version of the specification was created in 1997.[4] This first version was never released as a product by Sun.[4] A redesign of Picojava in 1999 would give birth to Picojava-II, which is freely available and has a rich documentation.[5][6]
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Puffitsch, W. and Schoeberl, M. 2007. picoJava-II in an FPGA. In Proceedings of the 5th international Workshop on Java Technologies For Real-Time and Embedded Systems (Vienna, Austria, September 26–28, 2007). JTRES '07, vol. 231. ACM, New York, NY, 213-221. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1288940.1288972
12Schoeberl, Martin; Puffitsch, Wolfgang. "picoJava-II in an FPGA"(PDF). jopdesign.com. Retrieved 2 October 2025.
McGhan, Harlan; O’Connor, Mike (October 1998). "PicoJava: A Direct Execution Engine For Java Bytecode". Computer, Volume 31, Issue 10: pp.22–30.
O’Connor, J. Michael; Tremblay, Marc (March/April 1997). "picoJava-I: The Java Virtual Machine in Hardware". IEEE Micro, Volume 17, Issue 2: pp.45–53.
Hangal, Sudheendra; O'Connor, J. Michael (May/June 1999). "Performance analysis and validation of the picoJava processor." IEEE Micro, Volume 19, Issue 3.
