Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!pollux!ti-csl!m2!holland From: holland@m2.csc.ti.com (Fred Hollander) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: New Mac Rumours (really language-based chips) Message-ID: <70956@ti-csl.csc.ti.com> Date: 26 Feb 89 21:41:18 GMT References: <70755@ti-csl.csc.ti.com> <409@pai.UUCP> Sender: news@ti-csl.csc.ti.com Reply-To: holland@m2.UUCP (Fred Hollander) Organization: TI Computer Science Center, Dallas Lines: 26 In article <409@pai.UUCP> erc@pai.UUCP (Eric Johnson) writes: > >Certain high-level languages make certain assumptions about an underlying >machine, or more usually, an underlying "virtual" machine. Most attempts >to optimize a processor to a specific language seem to focus at making >the processor instruction set the "virtual" machine instruction set. >Some examples (I may make mistakes so please correct any inaccurate info): [ lot's of good info on hardware specifically designed for special purpose langauges (Lisp, Forth, SmallTalk,...) deleted ] >Anyway, I hope this sheds some light, >-Eric Well, I'm a little embarassed because I didn't even consider things like Lisp machines. What caught my attention was the poster's claim that RISC was optimized for "C" [as opposed to Pascal]. The differences between the hardware requirements for these two language were less apparent. Thanks for such an informative reply. Fred Hollander Computer Science Center Texas Instruments, Inc. hollander@ti.com The above statements are my own and not representative of Texas Instruments.