High-level language computer architecture
A high-level language computer architecture (HLLCA) in a computer architecture designed to be targeted by a specific high-level language, rather than the architecture being dictated by hardware considerations. A pure HLLCA in fact lacks an assembler, having only a compiler, with machine code simply being an bytecode representation of a HLL program.
HLLCAs are intuitively appealing, and have had occasional popularity over the years, but have been very minor compared to general-purpose computers that are not adapted to any particular language; various reasons are offered for their lack of success.
HLLCAs date to the Burroughs large systems (1961), which was designed for ALGOL (1960), and the most well-known HLLCAs are the Lisp machines of the 1980s (for Lisp, 1959). At present the most popular HLLCAs are Java processors, for Java (1995), and these are a qualified success, being used for certain applications.
Examples
A number of processors and coprocessors intended to implement Prolog more directly were designed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the Berkeley VLSI-PLM, its successor (the PLUM), and a related microcode implementation. There were also a number of simulated designs that were not produced as hardware [1], [2]. Like Lisp, Prolog's basic model of computation is radically different from standard imperative designs, and computer scientists and electrical engineers were eager to escape the bottlenecks caused by emulating their underlying models.
Niklaus Wirth's Lilith project included a custom CPU geared toward the Modula-2 language.[1]
The INMOS Transputer was designed to support concurrent programming, using occam.
The AT&T Hobbit processor, stemming from a design called CRISP (C-language Reduced Instruction Set Processor), was optimized to run C code.
In the late 1990s, there were plans by Sun Microsystems and other companies to build CPUs that directly (or closely) implemented the stack-based Java virtual machine. As a result several Java processors have been built and used.
Ericsson developed ECOMP, a processor designed to run Erlang.[2] It was never commercially produced.
See also
References
- ^ "Pascal for Small Machines – History of Lilith". Pascal.hansotten.com. 28 September 2010. Retrieved 12 November 2011.
- ^ http://www.erlang.se/euc/00/processor.ppt
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