Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!XEROX.COM!"Frank_Shih.mvenvos"
From: "Frank_Shih.mvenvos"@XEROX.COM
Newsgroups: comp.sys.xerox
Subject: Re: AAAI-89 summary (long) [Really: Multiuser Lisp machine?]
Message-ID: <890909-055933-2675@Xerox>
Date: 8 Sep 89 00:28:32 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18

I read a short paper at their booth (I didn't keep the paper, so I'm doing
this from memory), it described a microcoded machine which implements a
Lisp interpreter (!?), directly.  I don't recall the technology underlying
the hardware as being unusual (I seem to recall something like 2 micron
CMOS).

It included a very few benchmarks comparing other (compiled) Lisp
implementations (in particular, D-machines), versus their microcoded
interpreter.  I recall some of their benchmarks were "relatively good"
(some were better than compiled Interlisp-on-D-machine).  Since the paper
didn't include compiled benchmarks for their machine, could it be that
there IS NO low-level instruction set to compile into?

So assuming the paper is describing the ELIS, it seems to be a rather
unusual lisp machine.  I seem to recall pricing in the very low 10s of
thousands....

-Frank.