[erlang-questions] How small could an Erlang emulator be?

[Robert Virding]

As Kenneth mentioned if you want a really small emulator it would be 
best to build a completely new one with that as the first priority. I 
wonder if the most compact wouldn't be to have a small byte code 
emulator based on a stack machine. No registers and stuff just 
operations on the top stack. Very regular and minimal. You would 
probably have to have a serious think about the memory model as well to 
keep the memory management code small.

Trimming BIFs and library functions implemented in C would save some 
space removing network stuff and the general port mechanism. Maybe even 
ETS but then would have difficulty running OTP.

I suppose it would also depend on what applications you intend running.

But it would definitely be fun trying!

Robert