One instruction set computer
en.wikipedia.org
One instruction set computer
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: One instruction set computer
#2Here's a single-instruction computer built out of the page translation behavior of X86 processors:
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/events/5265.en.h...
Re: One instruction set computer
#3At one point I was seriously fascinated by the lambda calculus and particularly the S and K combinators - two very simple functions that you can build any computation from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus
More recently I found out about the U combinator which is a single combinator that can be used to define S & K:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iota_and_Jot
Having a system that implemented recursion using the Y combinator in terms of S & K and have it actually compute stuff was rather amusing. I'd be fascinated to see what it would look like using just U.
Re: One instruction set computer
#4At one point I was seriously fascinated by the lambda calculus and particularly the S and K combinators - two very simple functions that you can build any computation from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus More recently I found out about the U combinator which is a single combinator that can be used to define S & K: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iota_and_Jot Having a system that implemented recursi…
It would look like a very (very!) long string of U's. :-)
You might enjoy this:
Re: One instruction set computer
#5At one point I was seriously fascinated by the lambda calculus and particularly the S and K combinators - two very simple functions that you can build any computation from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus More recently I found out about the U combinator which is a single combinator that can be used to define S & K: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iota_and_Jot Having a system that implemented recursi…
It would look like a very (very!) long string of U's. :-) You might enjoy this: http://www.flownet.com/ron/lambda-calculus.html
Actually, one of the many things I learned from doing a final year project for my CS degree on "benchmarking" different sets of combinators was how to write a garbage collector - I was doing this in '87/'88 on a Unix mini (HLH Orion) and memory was tight and my trees were comparatively huge!
Re: One instruction set computer
#6The awesome WireWorld prime number calculating computer is also a one instruction computer.
Re: One instruction set computer
#7also my favourite wikipedia disambiguation page, for the sheer, entertaining unrelatedness of the items therein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OISC
Re: One instruction set computer
#8I always thought MADD (Multiply + Add) made a great candidate for a single instruction set computer, if the program counter was usable as an operand to the instruction.
Re: One instruction set computer
#9I wrote a little implementation of an OISC virtual machine many years ago [1]. Feel free to have a play. There are some sample 'one instruction assembler' programs in the test programs folder.
Re: One instruction set computer
#10I'm curious, is there any real-world application for this? Or is it mostly interesting from a research perspective?
It seems like this wouldn't perform very well in the real world for most applications, but I could see it being useful for very simple architectures.