ssmith@joplin.mpr.ca (Shaun Smith) (08/23/89)
I'm cross posting this from comp.lang.smalltalk because no one there seemed to know anything about Linn Smart Computing's REKURSIV chip set. The REKURSIV is a WISC based architecture that enables one to provide the CPU with an arbitrarily complex instruction set. Besides this, it sees the universe as objects, just like an object oriented-language such as Smalltalk. I don't want to get into details because I'll probably screw them up, but if you want to know more, there is an article in the November 1988 issue of BYTE magazine. I want to know if anybody has ever seen a REKURSIV based device? David Harland, in his book _REKURSIV:_Object-Oriented_Computer_Architecture_ states that a VME board called HADES is available for Sun workstations, but has anyone ever used one? If you have some experience with it, did you have the Smalltalk instruction set loaded and how fast did it execute Smalltalk programs? For those unfamilier with Smalltalk, it is usually implemented via a virtual machine and therefore suffers from relatively slow performance on things such as numerical computation. To Smalltalk users, a hardware Smalltalk machine is a very exciting idea! Shaun Shaun M. Smith | ssmith@joplin.mpr.ca Microtel Pacific Research | joplin.mpr.ca!ssmith@uunet.uu.net 8999 Nelson Way, Burnaby, BC | ssmith%joplin.mpr.ca@relay.ubc.ca Canada, V5A 4B5, (604) 293-5345 | ...!ubc-vision!joplinmpr.ca!ssmith
pdbain@bmers58.UUCP (Peter Bain) (08/24/89)
In article <1759@eric.mpr.ca> ssmith@joplin.UUCP (Shaun Smith) writes: > >I'm cross posting this from comp.lang.smalltalk because no one there >seemed to know anything about Linn Smart Computing's REKURSIV chip set. > See also Harland's article in ACM Computer Architecture News, June 1986, titled "A Recursively Microcodable Tagged Architecture" -peter "This posting has nothing to do with my employer" bain
jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid) (08/25/89)
In article <1759@eric.mpr.ca> ssmith@joplin.UUCP (Shaun Smith) writes: >I want to know if anybody has ever seen a REKURSIV based device? >David Harland, in his book _REKURSIV:_Object-Oriented_Computer_Architecture_ >states that a VME board called HADES is available for Sun workstations, >but has anyone ever used one? We have had one of the boards for a few months now. It's very impressive - densly packed chips, 3 big custom ICs and hardly a wire in sight. This is quite remarkable since the board is one of the earliest made. The UK Government bought a handful of boards from Linn and has passed them to some universities/research institutes for people to work on. >If you have some experience with it, did you have the Smalltalk >instruction set loaded and how fast did it execute Smalltalk programs? We don't use the Rekursiv for Smalltalk, so I can't help you there. I understand that the programming environment isn't all that great - I think the Rekursiv only has a C compiler and some debugging tools. This is one of the reasons boards have gone to research places: so people can develop languages and tools that fully exploit the architecture. Jim