The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 14, 1999
Filed:
Mar. 31, 1997
Tao Shinn Chen, Cupertino, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A class structure of an object-oriented program system is optimized for hardware and implemented as a hardware system in an object-oriented processor. For example, a class structure derived from a Java Virtual Machine software system is optimized for hardware and implemented as a hardware Java object-oriented processor. A processor is implemented by defining a data structure and an object-oriented instruction set for executing in the object-oriented operating environment, and generating a hardware implementation of the processor enforcing the logical relationships of the instruction set as defined by the data structure. The data structure includes a class structure. The class structure and the instruction set describe the processor operations. A processor includes an execution engine based on a class structure to execute instructions of an object-oriented instruction set. The instruction set uses pointers for indexing through data structures to define an object method for execution. At the top of the data structure is a class structure for selecting the static class for creating objects. Once the class is found by indexing through the class structure, a constant pool is accessed to supply information to further describe the data structures that are used for creating an object and executing an object method. A processor includes an execution unit and a memory. The memory stores a data structure including a class structure. Classifiers are selected by a program and loaded. The class structure directs the instantiation of the loaded classifiers into objects. The execution unit executes object methods directed by the class structure.