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From: richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin)
Subject: Re: Theory #51 (superior(?) programming languages)
Message-ID: <E58KyJ.3Fp@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: HCRC, University of Edinburgh
References: <5cb9vd$qlf@mamba.cs.Virginia.EDU> <GJR.97Jan29110355@hplgr2.hpl.hp.com> <32EFB4B7.2185@vcc.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 14:15:55 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.arch:75144 comp.lang.lisp:25230 comp.lang.scheme:18505

In article <32EFB4B7.2185@vcc.com> sc@vcc.com writes:
>Most languages would run better if they ran on special
>machine designed for that language.

What makes you think that?  There are two good reasons why not:

- The speed may be limited by factors independent of the processor
itself, such as memory bandwidth.  There's no point providing, say,
efficient type-tag dispatch if you can't get the data into registers
fast enough.

- Specialised hardware is likely to be older technology than general
purpose hardware.  A lisp machine is not likely to have the resources
of Intel or even SGI behind it.  I remember conference papers on Lisp
and Prolog hardware in the 80s where the fancy hardware could just
about beat the previous generation of 68Ks.

> I'm wondering what the thoughts are on design a machine that
> accelerates lisp in some way.

Well, there have been plenty of those.  Some were good in some
respects; for example the Xerox machines we used didn't fall apart
when they started paging the way Suns did.

Lisp can be extremely fast with a good compiler, and it's much cheaper
to develop a good compiler than hardware, compiler, and OS.

-- Richard
-- 
"Cake is a bistrubile cranabolic amphetamoid"
