[TUHS] B Source Code
Noel Chiappa
jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Thu Sep 14 23:39:13 AEST 2017
> From: Alec Muffett
> "threaded code" in the old sense could be smaller than the equivalent
> CISC binary on the same machine
One can think of 'threaded code' as code for a new virtual machine, one
specialized to the task at hand.
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_code
For those who really want to delve in some depth, see the chapter "Turning
Cousins into Sisters" (Chapter 15, pg. 365) in "Computer Engineering: A DEC
View of Hardware Systems Design", by Bell, Mudge and McNamara.
Interesting factoid: The PDP-11 initially used a threaded FORTRAN
implementation. In line with the observation above (about a new virtual
machine), DEC actually looked into writing microcode for the -11/60 (which had
a writeable control store) to implement the FORTRAN virtual machine.
Noel
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