Hardly dumb. That's exactly how GPUs work. It's how mobile phones worked for a long time (J2ME). It's how Azul's old Java server worked too. Having software sh

Hardly dumb. That's exactly how GPUs work. It's how mobile phones worked for a long time (J2ME). It's how Azul's old Java server worked too. Having software ship in a high level abstract form and then the hardware comes with an integrated OS/compiler combo is pretty nice from an architectural perspective. It definitely frees up the CPU designers to do things they otherwise couldn't do easily due to backwards compatibility constraints, as well as allowing new hardware features to be used immediately as long as the compiler can recognize patterns that benefit.