With Java being a sort of common API for lots of programmers to reach the hardware, I have always wondered if we would ever saw hardware that would directly implement the JVM bytecode, or even JavaSE.

Apparently Altera has something called JVXtreme[1], which claim x55 peak and x15 sustained performance increase.

From the pdf: "JVXtreme accelerates the actual execution of Java by executing 87 of the most commonly used Java byte codes in hardware."

[1] https://www.altera.com/en_US/pdfs/products/ip/ampp/documents...