Sorry, no, JVM was not even innovative, let alone "hard tech". There were lots and lots of previous examples of doing the same (and better) than JVM, see for e

Sorry, no, JVM was not even innovative, let alone "hard tech". There were lots and lots of previous examples of doing the same (and better) than JVM, see for example the Smalltalk and Lisp world. IMO, the only thing on your list that comes close is the Azul GC which, in my limited understanding, actually advanced the state of the art.