Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!jim
From: jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: REKURSIV object-oriented architecture
Keywords: Object-Oriented, Chip Set, WISC
Message-ID: <267@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk>
Date: 24 Aug 89 17:45:47 GMT
References: <1759@eric.mpr.ca>
Sender: news@cs.strath.ac.uk
Reply-To: jim@cs.strath.ac.uk
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Scotland.
Lines: 24

In article <1759@eric.mpr.ca> ssmith@joplin.UUCP (Shaun Smith) writes:
>I want to know if anybody has ever seen a REKURSIV based device?
>David Harland, in his book _REKURSIV:_Object-Oriented_Computer_Architecture_ 
>states that a VME board called HADES is available for Sun workstations,
>but has anyone ever used one?

We have had one of the boards for a few months now. It's very impressive -
densly packed chips, 3 big custom ICs and hardly a wire in sight. This is
quite remarkable since the board is one of the earliest made.

The UK Government bought a handful of boards from Linn and has passed them
to some universities/research institutes for people to work on.

>If you have some experience with it, did you have the Smalltalk
>instruction set loaded and how fast did it execute Smalltalk programs?

We don't use the Rekursiv for Smalltalk, so I can't help you there.

I understand that the programming environment isn't all that great - I
think the Rekursiv only has a C compiler and some debugging tools. This
is one of the reasons boards have gone to research places: so people can
develop languages and tools that fully exploit the architecture.

		Jim