Research on Hardware Design of a Language Processing System Interactive Pogramming

为了有效地支持高级语言程序设计，显然语言系统必须被组织成一个精心设计的工具集，尽管工具的执行速度不能被忽视。这在使用解释器等低速工具时尤为重要。这种情况很容易通过使用过去十年来迅速发展的硬件技术来改变。相当复杂的算法可以很容易地在单个芯片中实现。本研究的目的是寻求系统的方法，将基于软件的算法转换为硬件。然而，当需要极大的效率时，通常的简单方法就不那么有效了;例如，软件算法的微程序实现可能获得10倍的性能;然而，当找到面向硬件的方法时，有时我们获得超过100倍的性能。在我们的项目中，一个silicon编译器被用来设计一个LSI芯片，并评估其性能。作为应用，我们使用了PL/0和Prolog两种语言解释器，并进行了原型芯片设计。为语言系统的VLSI实现提供了一些宝贵的经验和设计方法，为更实际的真实的芯片设计做好了准备。

In order to support high-level language programming effectively, obviously the language system must be organized as an elaborate tool set, although the exeution speed of the tool cannot be ignored. This is especially important when a low speed tool such as interpreter is used. This situation can be easily changed by the use of hardware technology which has been drastically developed for the past decade. Rather complex algorithm can be easily implemented in a single chip. This research is targeted to seek for systematic approaches to transform software based algorithms into hardwared one. When drastic efficiency should be expected, however ; usual simple minded approach is not so effective ; for example, a microprogram implementation of software algorithm may obtain 10 times performance ; however, when a hardware oriented approach is found, sometimes we obtain more than 100 times performance. In our project, a sillicon compiler is used to design a LSI chip and evaluate its perfoemance. As applications we used two language interpreters : PL/0 and Prolog, and made prototype chip designs for these. As a result, we got several valuable experiences and design measures of VLSI realization of language system, and preparation of more actual design of real chips.