>>>It is only a matter of time before a CPU chip with an embedded JVM is built, and then the speed issue vanishes.
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>>see these:
>>http://eet.com/news/97/973news/java.html
>>http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19990709S0012
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>Here is another URL:
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>http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19991018S0025
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>It seems that the team at Rockwell that developed the JEM1 (or GEM1) was frustrated by the lack of marketing interest at Rockwell (which developed the Java chip for internal use in avionics systems). So they worked with Rockwell to spin out a company name Ajile (pronounced "agile" ??) which will develop the AJ100 processor.
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>"The company's AJ100 Java processor features multiple Java virtual machines (JVMs) and an embedded real-time operating system on the chip itself. That dispenses with the need for a hefty external RTOS, because everything is done in microcode.
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>"We have the best hard real-time, period," said Ajile president George Hwang, a former co-founder of Integrated Device Technology. "Nobody comes close. We can run at 1-microsecond real-time context switching. Anybody else is talking milliseconds."
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>I seriously doubt that the Java language is going to fade away.
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>Peter

I've also seen a Modicon PLC based on the StrongARM CPU running natively compiled Java. There are a number of native compilers for Java bytecode that have been shipping for years, one of them from a company owned by Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft. When Java is natively compiled, C++/C lose their performance edge. Incidentally, C++/C are stack oriented languages as well.