Stack-based machine depends on a register-based machine?

Question

Normal CPUs (for example, Android devices) are register-based machines. The Java virtual Machine is a stack based machine. But does a stack-based machine depend on a regis

Answer 1

I know you've already selected your answer, but I'd like to address the whole "stack machine" thing.

While most physical CPUs are, in fact, register machines, there have been stack machines as physical CPUs. Burroughs' B5000- and B6000-series machines, for example, or the RTX2000-series chips used in space flight (originally implemented by Chuck Moore in gate array logic and later commercialized). The UCSD Pascal p-Machine was implemented straight up in hardware as well by a variety of implementers.

In terms of computational strength, register and stack machines are roughly equivalent. (It depends, of course, on which precise models of register or stack machines you're dealing with.) Stack machines have the advantage of simplicity, small size and expandability. Register machines tend to be faster. Register machines can emulate stack machines (that's what the BP and SP registers in the x86 architecture are for, after all!) and stack machines can themselves imitate register machines if need be.

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edited to add

I'd almost forgotten to point you to a book that discusses stack computers in depth. Koopman is a bit of a fanboi for stack computers and his prediction that they were "the new wave" was woefully wrong, but it's an interesting read.