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From: billkatt@sol.engin.umich.edu (billkatt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: New Mac Rumours
Message-ID: <41aa5eaa.a590@mag.engin.umich.edu>
Date: 24 Feb 89 14:13:00 GMT
References: <IY0io5y00UgPAM2b4a@andrew.cmu.edu> <41a2364a.a590@mag.engin.umich.edu> <70755@ti-csl.csc.ti.com>
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In article <70755@ti-csl.csc.ti.com> holland@m2.UUCP (Fred Hollander) writes:
>In article <41a2364a.a590@mag.engin.umich.edu> billkatt@caen.engin.umich.edu (billkatt) writes:
>>is in an object oriented format.  Yes, it is doubtful that they will do a
>>rewrite in Pascal, since the system is currently written in Assembly
>>language, and RISC chips are optimized for C.
>
>This is very interesting.  I don't have the strongest background in
>hardware architecture, but, could you please explain how a processor
>could be optimized for a specific high level language?
>
>Fred Hollander

Sure.  Some processors (the 68000 for example) are much better suited (and
some designed) for the c calling conventions.  It is a mess for the called
routine to remove the parameters passed to it before returning on the 68000.
This isn't a problem with c.  Some addressing modes (post/pre indexed
increment/decrement) will get used more in c than Pascal, although they are
a valuable addition to any processor.

Some more blatant examples are TIs LISP chip (explorer/microexplorer) and
somebodys (TIs also?) FORTH chip.


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