I suppose this is in the same realm as what some people are trying to do with WASM, creating a common execution environment? This is built on RISC-V instead though. I wish I knew more about the limitations/capabilities of each approach, but in any case a future where applications are built for a common VM seems like something we've been building to for a while, the modern web being the closest we've come.
Show HN: Tiny VM sandbox in C with apps in Rust, C and Zig
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Re: Show HN: Tiny VM sandbox in C with apps in Rust, C and Zig
#12Looks like RISC-V 32-bit integer and multiply and atomic instr extension. Floating point supported when compiling via gcc or similar the example apps (not by the emulator itself but by the compiler emiting the required software functions to emulate the floating point operations instead).
I think it is very clever. Very compact instruction set, with the advantage of being supported by several compilers.
Wrapper over this other project which is the one implementing the instruction set itself: https://github.com/cnlohr/mini-rv32ima
Kudos to both projects.
Re: Show HN: Tiny VM sandbox in C with apps in Rust, C and Zig
#13Have you considered adding support for memory-mapped IO simulation? That would make it useful for testing IoT/microcontroller drivers without the actual hardware.
Re: Show HN: Tiny VM sandbox in C with apps in Rust, C and Zig
#14Interesting timing - been looking for exactly this for embedded firmware testing. Most alternatives are either too heavy (full emulation) or too fragile (custom interpreters). Have you considered adding support for memory-mapped IO simulation? That would make it useful for testing IoT/microcontroller drivers without the actual hardware.
Re: Show HN: Tiny VM sandbox in C with apps in Rust, C and Zig
#15Really neat clean code! I like the single C file, but Docker if you want all the examples approach, that's really convenient for embedded. Test coverage looks good as well, be interesting to see the metrics. This would be quite cool for adding scripting to medical devices, avoiding the need to revalidate the "core" each time you change a feature. An interesting comparison would be against an embedded WASM bytecode in…