I mean, bytecode that runs on hardware is still hardware-independent, it's the hardware that have to conform to the bytecode's interface not the other way aroun

I mean, bytecode that runs on hardware is still hardware-independent, it's the hardware that have to conform to the bytecode's interface not the other way around. If every processor in existence had to accept x86 instruction streams as valid programs, x86 would be a hardware-independent VM. The issue would be if there are multiple bytecode formats for different hardware.