Architectural approaches to the design of LISP-oriented reduced-instruction set machines
The Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC) architectural concept was applied to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, namely, the List Processing language, LISP. The study investigates the most important aspects of the RISC architecture (i.e., Instruction Set, Call/Return Mechanism, and Pipeline Organization). These architectural features are, then, tailored to fit the nature the LISP language. Thus a software tool was developed to experiment with the dynamic execution of many programs determined to represent the LISP language applications in artificial intelligence. The most-frequently used machine instructions were found, and an instruction set for a new RISC-oriented LISP was proposed based on these results. A complete analysis of the frequency of memory and register usage by LISP programs, as well as the frequency of different addressing modes, is presented. It was found that Call/Return operations consumed more than 50% of the total execution time of LISP programs due to the recursive nature of LISP. This factor prompted the study and development of an efficient Call/Return mechanism designed especially for LISP execution. An Overlapping Register Windows (ORW) scheme was introduced, and a replacement strategy was found as a result of simulating the ORW.
- Research Organization:
- Miami Univ., Coral Gables, FL (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 5635029
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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