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From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Subject: [TUHS] B Source Code
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2017 09:39:13 -0400 (EDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20170914133913.178D618C094@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (raw)

    > From: Alec Muffett

    > "threaded code" in the old sense could be smaller than the equivalent
    > CISC binary on the same machine

One can think of 'threaded code' as code for a new virtual machine, one
specialized to the task at hand.

    > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_code

For those who really want to delve in some depth, see the chapter "Turning
Cousins into Sisters" (Chapter 15, pg. 365) in "Computer Engineering: A DEC
View of Hardware Systems Design", by Bell, Mudge and McNamara.

Interesting factoid: The PDP-11 initially used a threaded FORTRAN
implementation. In line with the observation above (about a new virtual
machine), DEC actually looked into writing microcode for the -11/60 (which had
a writeable control store) to implement the FORTRAN virtual machine.

	Noel


             reply	other threads:[~2017-09-14 13:39 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2017-09-14 13:39 Noel Chiappa [this message]
2017-09-14 14:24 ` Dan Cross
2017-09-14 19:46   ` Derek Fawcus
2017-09-15  3:59 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-09-15 11:43   ` William Pechter
2017-09-19  1:20     ` Dave Horsfall
2017-09-15 12:44   ` Clem Cole
2017-09-15 13:03     ` Clem Cole
2017-09-15 14:16       ` [TUHS] Rich's B compiler, was " Tony Finch
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2017-09-15 15:21 [TUHS] " Noel Chiappa
2017-09-14  3:48 Doug McIlroy
2017-09-14  4:49 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-14  5:06   ` Lars Brinkhoff
2017-09-14 12:53     ` Ronald Natalie
2017-09-14  5:33   ` Alec Muffett
2017-09-14  5:44     ` Warner Losh
2017-09-12 18:03 Robert Swierczek
2017-09-12 18:14 ` Clem Cole
2017-09-12 19:24   ` Clem Cole
2017-09-12 19:43     ` Steve Johnson
2017-09-18 21:45     ` Angelo Papenhoff
2017-09-19 17:01       ` Thorsten Sideboard
2017-09-12 19:36   ` Charles Anthony
2017-09-12 20:39   ` Robert Swierczek

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