dolf@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Dolf Grunbauer) (09/01/89)
In article <26595@winchester.mips.COM> mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) writes: >In article <1989Aug30.152155.9613@mentor.com> plogan@mentor.com (Patrick Logan) writes: >>In article <1989Aug26.232710.27174@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >>>Take a look at the history of Lisp on Lisp machines, whose time has come >>>*and gone* -- those awful "C-only" RISC machines run Lisp faster than the >>>custom-cooked Lisp machines do. >>Saying that C machines run Lisp faster than Lisp machines is >>simplistic. >There are many good ideas in LISP, and more of it will filter over. Just a short I-just-want-to-know question: is it true that the DEC-10 systems processors were designed for an efficient Lisp implementation, and was it efficient ? (I once heard someone state that these processors were made with two high-level languages as aims, one of which was Lisp, and the other I forgot (I guess it must be FORTRAN isn't it ?)). -- Dolf Grunbauer Tel: +31 55 432764 Internet dolf@idca.tds.philips.nl Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems UUCP ....!mcvax!philapd!dolf Dept. SSP, P.O. Box 245, 7300 AE Apeldoorn, The Netherlands -- Dolf Grunbauer Tel: +31 55 432764 Internet dolf@idca.tds.philips.nl Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems UUCP ....!mcvax!philapd!dolf Dept. SSP, P.O. Box 245, 7300 AE Apeldoorn, The Netherlands
mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) (09/01/89)
In article <240@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl> dolf@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Dolf Grunbauer) writes: >Just a short I-just-want-to-know question: is it true that the DEC-10 systems >processors were designed for an efficient Lisp implementation, and was it >efficient ? Yes, the PDP-6 (the immediate predecessor to the PDP-10) was designed with Lisp in mind, and for many years the PDP-10 was *the* standard engine for running Lisp. There were three major Lisps for the PDP-10; Stanford Lisp 1.6/UCI Lisp/Rutgers Lisp, BBN/Xerox Interlisp, and MIT MacLisp. The Stanford PDP-6 had a machine instruction to implement CONS (this was in 1964 when DEC would implement custom instructions in an individual processor for customers) and the Lisp 1.6 sources had support for it under an assembly switch, but to my knowlege it was never turned on and the Stanford PDP-10 did not have CONS. The main benefit for Lisp was the PDP-10's halfword instructions and indexing, which made it ultra-easy to build lists in an efficient manner and to chase down these lists. The main thing that eventually killed the PDP-10 for Lisp was the address space issue and the absence of any faster CPU's after 1975. A 30-bit address space Common Lisp was developed, but it had no particular advantages over Lisp on other machines. A fast PDP-10 could be built today to run Common Lisp quite competitively, but without any of the display facilities modern Lispers are used to it wouldn't be interesting. Mark Crispin / 6158 Lariat Loop NE / Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2020 mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU / MRC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil / (206) 842-2385 Atheist & Proud / 450cc Rebel pilot -- a step up from 250cc's!!! tabesaserarenakerebanaranakattarashii...kisha no kisha ga kisha de kisha-shita sumomo mo momo, momo mo momo, momo ni mo iroiro aru uraniwa ni wa niwa, niwa ni wa niwa niwatori ga iru
mike@thor.acc.stolaf.edu (Mike Haertel) (09/02/89)
In article <240@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl> dolf@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Dolf Grunbauer) writes: >Just a short I-just-want-to-know question: is it true that the DEC-10 systems >processors were designed for an efficient Lisp implementation, and was it >efficient ? (I once heard someone state that these processors were made with >two high-level languages as aims, one of which was Lisp, and the other I forgot >(I guess it must be FORTRAN isn't it ?)). I don't know if Lisp support was a design goal of the PDP-10 architecture, but I do know that ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing System) included custom microcode for the KL- and KS-10 processors (I believe the main effort in porting ITS to a new processor was the microcode). It added several instructions, including a few needed by MACLISP. I don't recall exactly; it's been a while since I read the microcode, but I think the new instructions included something special for Deutsch-Schorr-Waite garbage collection (probably something like atomic test-and-mark with conditional branch), and perhaps also something for tagged arithmetic. I may be totally off the mark here, but this is what I seem to recall. -- Mike Haertel <mike@stolaf.edu> ``There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.'' -- J. S. Bach