Design and implementation of a high-level language for a programmable frame buffer

Technical Report · Sat Oct 29 04:00:00 EDT 1977

OSTI ID:5197333

Faul, D R

The design and implementation of a language for a programmable frame buffer are presented. The language provides the facilities of a symbolic machine language, yet displays high-level block and control structure. This report describes the hardware peculiarities of the Programmable Picture Processor (PPP), the programmable module of the frame buffer, and how the language design compensates for its restrictions and utilizes its special characteristics. The implementation of the language, as outlined in this report, is structured around the use of a syntax analyzer/parser generator program for SLR(1) and LALR(1) grammars. Translated code is compared to hand-code for a representative PPP program. The results indicate the language allows quick, concise, and readable PPP programming. The translated programs are also compact in storage and reasonably efficient in execution time compared to hand-code. A language description, implementation description, and hardware summary are included in separate appendices. 2 figures.

• Research Organization: California Univ., Livermore (USA). Lawrence Livermore Lab.
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 5197333
• Report Number(s): UCID-17745
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200* -- Mathematics & Computers
CATHODE RAY TUBES
DESIGN
ELECTRON TUBES
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
EQUIPMENT INTERFACES
MEMORY DEVICES
MICROPROCESSORS
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
RADIO EQUIPMENT
TELEVISION