On Jan 23, 2008 12:39 AM, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bob La Quey wrote: > > Or better yet check out Forth based archtectures. > > > > I do not have the time nor energy to get you guys > > to the point of understanding all of this ... > > but try looking at > > http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/stack.html > > or read the book > > http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/stack_computers/index.html > > > > Reading this thread is like revisiting the mid 70's ... > > > > Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. > > George Santayana > > > > Those who cannot forget the past are condemned to repeat it. > > BobLQ "Comment on the situation in Northern Ireland" > > > > What has happened is that economics trumped technology > > and x86 register based architectures beat out far superior > > stack based multiprocessors. > > Ummm, excuse me. I seem to remember a rather popular stack-based FPU > that won the game in the not-so-distant past.
OK. Not something I knew. Always good to learn something. Care to give a link? > And it was so damn annoying to produce good code for it that one of the > first things that company had to do in its later incarnations was create > a 0-cycle FXCHG so that it could be treated as a random access register > system. Some people are annoyed easily. Especially when they are confronted with the need to change their habits of thought or their code. I have noted over and over that register based thinkers seem to have this rigidity. Stack guys OTOH being a minority seem to be able to think register style when they must, which is often. > While I hear lots of hyperbole about stack-based systems like Forth, a > whole lot of very smart people seem to hit walls that don't seem to be > surmountable from stack-based systems. A lot of very smart people are hitting walls without stacks as well. Perhaps the problems are actually difficult? Rather than "hearing hyperbole" your time would be better spent with Koopman's book, which is quite accessible, and then forming your own opinion directly. > And, in fact, some of the newer VM's are even moving away from > stack-based. Lua, IIRC, has changed from stack-based to register-based > VM and promptly picked up quite a performance boost. Of course they will pick up a performance boost when they move to a VM model that maps directly to the underlying hardware. That is a obvious. Now if the VM were register based and the underlying hardware stack based ... uh, Duh. -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
