Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!usc!ucla-cs!uci-ics!honig From: honig@ics.uci.edu (David A. Honig) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Self-modifying code Message-ID: <1989Oct23.103636.3310@paris.ics.uci.edu> Date: 23 Oct 89 17:36:36 GMT References: <480@gp.govt.nz> <6481@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <9175@etana.tut.fi> <12288@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <1318@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Reply-To: David A. Honig Organization: University of California, Irvine - Dept of ICS Lines: 17 I've programmed a high-performance graphics system (an IMI 455) with techniques that exploit stored-program advantages. To program the thing, you write C-programs on a Unix host which write programs into "display list memory". These aren't compilers per se, they compute (eg, from physical models) what kind of display commands to give to the display generator, itself a microcoded cpu. One way of using this thing for animation is to have the C-program change the display-generator's program as it is being read and interpreted by the display-generator. Why use this technique? Its actually simplifying, given the existing complex architecture needed to obtain the high performance. And it avoids some of the problems that self-referencing, self-modifying code has, since the C-program doesn't modify itself. -- David A Honig