
VISC: Virtual Instruction Set Computing - ingve
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/dl.aspx?id=249344
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LForLambda
Apple already requires submission of llvm bitcode, if Microsoft adopts this
then it may become a thing.

Oh god no.

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i336_
I don't recall the details but I understand M$ opened .NET because they're
going to have a cloud-based ".NET IL in, optimized C(/C++?) out" service for
Windows (desktop, tablet, phone, XBOne), while everyone else is stuck with
running the .NET runtime bytecode interpreter. It's a remarkably well-thought-
through plan; .NET has proven itself as a reasonably snappy platform, so
Linux/FreeBSD/OS X won't feel _too_ left out.

So yeah, pretty much exactly what you described.

~~~
krylon
Well, the .Net runtime, including their current JIT compiler, is open source
now, so nothing keeps people from improving the JIT compiler or replacing it
with a static IL->binary compiler.

IIRC correctly, GCC could compile Java to machine code a couple of years back.
This obviously required one to a) have the source and b) give up on cross-
platform portability, and I don't know how well the compiled code performed in
comparison to bytecode running on, say, HotSpot, but the option was there. In
other words, it has been done before.

As much as I like to distrust Microsoft, if they can implement a static
compilation scheme for .Net that provides better performance than what the
open source community can come up with, and then offering it for Windows only,
that may not be super-nice of them, but it certainly is not evil, either.

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i336_
I've been staring at this for a good 15 minutes, and I can't find the video
URL. I have nothing currently running Windows.

You gotta take a look at the HTML for this page. It definitely looks like an
academic research group built it. ><

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loginusername
Don't need Windows to download the video.

Not sure about playback.

It's 742MB ".asf" file. ffmpeg, ffplay, mplayer, ...?

[http://msrvideo.vo.msecnd.net/rmcvideos/249344/249344.asf](http://msrvideo.vo.msecnd.net/rmcvideos/249344/249344.asf)

~~~
i336_
Oh, thanks very much!

I'm guessing you got that out of the Network panel? Chrome on Linux just shows
an empty video URL field in the source code, and I couldn't figure out the
magic code path that filled in in. :P

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h0l0cube
Frustrating to watch as the audience asks the same question over and over and
the speaker doesn't provide a satisfying answer. Of course you can run
analysis at compile-time, but if your executables are compromised (eg. virus,
memory corruption, dodgy 3rd party software/drivers etc.) you can still
guarantee your system won't be skittled. And also you get the speed benefit of
not needing a hypervisor, and the security benefit of having a small attack
surface area of trusted code. If the audience wasn't so self-righteous and
listened, we might have got to see the automated debugging section.

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sliekasbekelniu
From the headline I thought it would be related to Variable Instruction Set
Computing (VISC) architeture [0], but sadly it's not.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8502256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8502256)

