registers vs stacks

Question

What exactly are the advantages and disadvantages to using a register-based virtual machine versus using a stack-based virtual machine?

To me, it would seem as though a

Answer 1

It is not obvious to me that a "register-based" virtual machine would be "more straight-forward to program" or "more efficient". Perhaps you are thinking that the virtual registers would provide a short-cut during the JIT compilation phase? This would certainly not be the case, since the real processor may have more or fewer registers than the VM, and those registers may be used in different ways. (Example: values that are going to be decremented are best placed in the ECX register on x86 processors.) If the real machine has more registers than the VM, then you're wasting resources, fewer and you've gained nothing using "register-based" programming.