Editing Hardware abstraction (section)

===AS/400===
An "extreme" example of a HAL can be found in the [[System/38]] and [[AS/400]] architectures, currently implemented in the [[IBM i]] operating system. Most compilers for those systems generate an abstract machine code; the Licensed Internal Code, or LIC, translates this virtual machine code into native code for the processor on which it is running and executes the resulting native code.<ref name="soltis"/> (The exceptions are compilers that generate the LIC itself; those compilers are not available outside IBM.) This was so successful that application software and operating system software above the LIC layer that were compiled on the original S/38 run without modification and without recompilation on the latest AS/400 systems, despite the fact that the underlying hardware has been changed dramatically; at least three different types of processors have been in use.<ref name="soltis"/>