Hardware STG?

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

Think carefully first!  Lots of people tried this in the 80's.
To beat generic (but high-investment) microprocessors you
need to find a factor or 10 or so improvement in the basic=20
architecture, and that is hard to find.

The STG machine is designed to be ok for stock hardware,
but it's not specialised for stock hardware, so there's no reason
it's a bad base for specialised hardware.

No, Tcode is very old.  We use some different byte-code for
the GHCi byte code, but it is designed for easy compilation=20
rather than fast execution.  For fast execution we compile to
native code, or to C, or (soon I hope) C--.

Simon


| -----Original Message-----
| From: MR K P SCHUPKE [mailto:k.schupke@ic.ac.uk]=20
| Sent: 21 August 2002 16:32
| To: glasgow-haskell-users
| Subject: Hardware STG?
|=20
|=20
| Hi,
|     I am looking into starting a project on special hardware to run=20
| haskell - (or perhapse any
| lazy functional hardware)... If I go ahead the project will=20
| result in an=20
| open VHDL implementation.  I would like to ask a couple of questions.
| =20
|     Is there any point in doing this as the STG-machine is=20
| designed to=20
| make running haskell
|         efficient on standard hardware?
|=20
|     is TCode and the byte code used by GHCi the same?
|=20
|     finally, does anyone know of any implementations that=20
| have already=20
| been attempted,
|         and how successful were they? Any general comments on how=20
| worthwhile this might
|         be?
|=20
|     Regards,
|     Keean Schupke
|     Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering,
|     Imperial College London.
|=20
|=20
| _______________________________________________
| Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list=20
| Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org=20
| http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-| haskell-users
|=20