[Haskell-cafe] Specialized Computer Architecture - A Question

[Simon Farnsworth]

OWP wrote:

> Ironically, you made an interesting point on how Moore's Law created
> the on chip "real estate" that made specialized machines possible.  As
> transistor sizing shrinks and die sizes increase, more and more real
> estate should now be available for usage.  Oddly, what destroyed
> specialized machines in the past seemed to be the same cause in
> reviving it from the dead.
> 
> The ARM Jazelle interface - I'm not familiar with it's but it's got me
> curious.  Has there been any though (even in the most lighthearted
> discussions) on what a physical "Haskell Machine" could look like?
> Mainly, what could be left to compile to the stock architecture and
> what could be sent out to more specialized areas?
> 
You might be interested in looking at the Reduceron - 
http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/reduceron/ - it was an FPGA-based effort to 
design a CPU explicitly for a Haskell-like language.

-- 
Simon Farnsworth