Which executes Java bytecode?

Which executes Java bytecode?

• A. Operating system
• B. Web browser
• C. The Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
• D. Java compiler

Answer: (C)

Java bytecode is designed to run on a virtual machine rather than directly on hardware. The Java Virtual Machine is the runtime engine that reads the bytecode, verifies it, and executes it—either by interpreting instructions or by compiling hot paths to native code with Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation. This setup lets the same bytecode run on different platforms as long as a JVM is available for that platform. An operating system itself doesn’t execute Java bytecode directly; it runs processes and native machine code. A web browser might have historically used a JVM plugin to run applets, but modern browsers no longer execute Java bytecode natively. The Java compiler, by contrast, is the tool that translates Java source code into bytecode, not something that runs the bytecode.

Java bytecode is designed to run on a virtual machine rather than directly on hardware. The Java Virtual Machine is the runtime engine that reads the bytecode, verifies it, and executes it—either by interpreting instructions or by compiling hot paths to native code with Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation. This setup lets the same bytecode run on different platforms as long as a JVM is available for that platform.

An operating system itself doesn’t execute Java bytecode directly; it runs processes and native machine code. A web browser might have historically used a JVM plugin to run applets, but modern browsers no longer execute Java bytecode natively. The Java compiler, by contrast, is the tool that translates Java source code into bytecode, not something that runs the bytecode.