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A microprogrammed interpreter for concurrent euclid

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Published:01 August 1989Publication History
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Abstract

There are several methods of executing programs written in a high level language. The most widely used is to compile the programs into machine language. Another is to translate the programs into some intermediate form and then to execute that form interpretively. A third method is to directly execute either the HLL or the intermediate form.

This study was aimed at investigating the feasibility of directly executing the intermediate representation of the sequential features of Concurrent Euclid (CE) on the SEL 32/75 computer. The CE intermediate code was translated into Ecode, and a microprogrammed interpreter for Ecode was designed and implemented on the SEL, and benchmarked against the compiler. For the CPU-bound prime number algorithm Sieve of Eratosthenes, the interpreter was measured to be about twice as slow as the compiler, due primarily to poor overlap within microinstructions. Ecode was then modified, and a new translator and interpreter designed and implemented. The same benchmark then yielded comparable results for both the interpreter and compiler. We project that further changes in Ecode design and hardware support would result in substantial Ecode efficiency gains.

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          • Published in

            cover image ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter
            ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter  Volume 20, Issue 3
            Sep. 1989
            253 pages
            ISSN:1050-916X
            DOI:10.1145/75395
            Issue’s Table of Contents
            • cover image ACM Conferences
              MICRO 22: Proceedings of the 22nd annual workshop on Microprogramming and microarchitecture
              August 1989
              253 pages
              ISBN:0897913248
              DOI:10.1145/75362

            Copyright © 1989 Authors

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            Association for Computing Machinery

            New York, NY, United States

            Publication History

            • Published: 1 August 1989

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