Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!necntc!ima!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: hardware for late-binding languages (Was: negative addresses)
Message-ID: <20764@think.UUCP>
Date: 16 May 88 19:18:49 GMT
References: <11571@ut-sally.UUCP> <28200145@urbsdc> <11618@ut-sally.UUCP> <493@cmx.npac.syr.edu> <4926@june.cs.washington.edu>
Sender: usenet@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 21

In article <4926@june.cs.washington.edu> pardo@uw-june.UUCP (David Keppel) writes:
[regarding Symbolics Lisp Machines:]
>essentially that if you had a fixed program (e.g., you weren't trying
>to debug it), that compiler technology would give you a program that
>ran just as fast on an architecture w/o support for late-binding
>languages.  The real wins of the extra hardware, he said, were during
>development, etc.

If the only issue is early vs. late binding, this is probably true.
Once a program is in production use it is not likely to change often,
so late binding isn't much of a feature.

However, specialized Lisp hardwares typically have special support for
other things besides late binding, e.g. type dispatching,
object-oriented programmin, garbage collection, etc.

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
uunet!think!barmar