[nmcveity]

Not sure about the machine linked in the article, but sometimes the operating system might prevent you from marking heap allocated pages as executable.

However, in that case you are only prevented from using the JIT compiler and should still be able to take advantage of the high-speed interpreter included.

[catwell]

I wrote that article, just found out it was on the front page of HN today.

The machine linked in the article can not even run the unmodified interpreter (or at least it could not at the time) because its CPU does not support the CMOV instruction.

Regarding the bugs: I do think most of them are in the JIT and not the interpreter. Even using a lower optimization level that the default fixes a lot of them.

[david-given]

What's the processor in the Lima? The website has no technical information on it whatsoever (even under the 'Tech Specs' sections). Genuinely curious; I thought all x86 processors made these days supported CMOV.

[catwell]

It is a CPU from RDC (Taiwanese manufacturer). It is 486-compatible but misses some instructions from later Pentium sets.

[david-given]

I'm thoroughly bemused as to why they picked it --- unless you're aiming at some sort of binary compatibility, and given that it won't run Windows I have no idea what it might be compatible with, surely one of the ARM or MIPS stable would be more appropriate for this kind of device?

...over here, in this cardboard box, I have an old SheevaPlug: a 1.2GHz Marvell ARMv5 in a plug-sized box with some flash, an SD card interface, ethernet, and some USB ports, which appears to be pretty much the same device. (Of course, it's the software that's the interesting bit.)

[fsfod]

Well someone was crazy enough to port LuaJIT to run in the FreeBSD kernel including the JIT by the looks of it.

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2818305 http://ake.in.th/2016/01/09/til-there-is-a-tool-named-diffst...