[Haskell-cafe] CPU with Haskell support

[Gleb Popov]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 1:12 AM, Henning Thielemann <
lemming at henning-thielemann.de> wrote:

>
> Hi all,
>
> every now and then I think it would be cool to have a microprocessor that
> supports Haskell in a way. A processor where lazy evaluation is not
> overhead but an optimization opportunity, a processor that can make use of
> the explicit data dependencies in Haskell programs in order to utilize many
> computation units in parallel. I know of the Reduceron project, which
> evolves only slowly and if it somewhen is ready for use it is uncertain
> whether it can compete with stock CPUs since FPGA's need much more chip
> space for the same logic.
>
> I got to know that in todays x86 processors you can alter the instruction
> set, which is mainly used for bugfixes. Wouldn't it be interesting to add
> some instructions for Haskell support? However, I suspect that such a patch
> might be rendered invalid by new processor generations with changed
> internal details. Fortunately, there are processors that are designed for
> custom instruction set extensions:
>    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xtensa
>
> Would it be sensible to create a processor based on such a design? I have
> no idea what it might cost, and you would still need some peripheral
> circuitry to run it. What could processor instructions for Haskell support
> look like? Has anyone already thought in this direction?
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I remember reading relevent paper: The Reduceron reconfigured and
re-evaluated. Authors are MATTHEW NAYLOR and COLIN RUNCIMAN.
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