Implementation
The Ericsson Erlang implementation loads virtual machine bytecode which is converted to threaded code at load time. It also includes a native code compiler on most platforms, developed by the High Performance Erlang Project (HiPE) at Uppsala University. Since October 2001 the HiPE system is fully integrated in Ericsson's Open Source Erlang/OTP system. It also supports interpreting, directly from source code via abstract syntax tree, via script as of R11B-5 release of Erlang.
Read more about this topic: Erlang (programming Language)