The implementation was a part of the effort in the early 2000s to break the Java ecosystem free from Sun Microsystems's control.

[1][2][3] The core engine is an interpreter which used ground-breaking techniques to deliver performance that can approach that of a "naive" just-in-time (JIT) compiler, while retaining the software engineering advantages of interpreters: portability, maintainability and simplicity.

[4][5] This simplicity makes SableVM's source code very accessible and easy to understand for new users/programmers.

Some versions of the SableVM use Java Intermediate Language, an intermediate language (which is a subset of XML) representing the type structure of a Java program.

The language was proposed by the team of SableVM in McGill University in January 2002 to aid the analysis of a Java program with the goals of scalability and good performance.