Re: having source code for your CPU chip -- NOT

[Bill Frantz]

At 9:15 PM -0700 9/21/99, Arnold Reinhold wrote:
>First of all, I've always thought that Thompson's paper was
>excessively defeatist. It should be possible to bootstrap an open
>source C++ compiler from a simple C subset and then have several
>grouts independently produce subset C compilers in assembler code. Or
>compile it on ancient machines, e.g. PDP-11 using original compilers.
>The bad guys can't have anticipated that far ahead.

My own approach would be to audit the generated code.  In KeyKOS/370, we
"solved" the problem by using an assembler which was written before KeyKOS
was designed.  (N.B. KeyKOS/370 was written in 370 Assembler H).



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