Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site frog.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!frog!john From: john@frog.UUCP (John Woods) Newsgroups: net.arch Subject: Re: Novix Forth chip seen at Rochester Conference Message-ID: <206@frog.UUCP> Date: Mon, 24-Jun-85 13:40:05 EDT Article-I.D.: frog.206 Posted: Mon Jun 24 13:40:05 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 27-Jun-85 08:28:00 EDT References: <249@tekcbi.UUCP> <89300001@hpisla.UUCP> Organization: Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA Lines: 36 > >a rate of approximately 10 Million Forth primitives per second (at a clock > >rate of 8 MHz). > Amazing! > (a.k.a. Unbelievable!) > Unless I am missing something, even an *extremely* complex processor > could execute only 8 "Million Forth primitives per second (at a clock > rate of 8 MHz)." I have the article on the Forth chip from Electronic Design, 21 March 1985 (DROOL DROOL DROOL!!!!!!!). The key to how it works is in the following statement, quoted from said article: "The first chip to be released, the NC4000A, runs at a clock speed of 8MHz. Each instruction executes in a single clock cycle, and performs as many as five operations simultaneously -- for a chip speed of over 10 million operations per second." Most FORTH operations require most of the available chip operations, per cycle, but several FORTH operations don't, and can be easily combined with idiomatically subsequent FORTH operations for simultaneous execution, e.g. operation pairs like @ +, OVER SWAP -, or the amazing DUP @ SWAP nn + (an incrementing fetch, basically). The chip (from the article) basically looks rather like a bitslice processor which you get to write the microcode for (rather than it interpreting macro- code). The microcode is specially designed to be graceful for much of FORTH. It also have 5 busses, two I/O busses, a "data stack" bus, a "return stack" bus, and a "main memory" bus. Implementing C on it looks like it might be tricky, but it is clearly the ideal FORTH chip. -- John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101 ...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw%mit-ccc@MIT-XX.ARPA The State Department is paying me to post this message, but if I am caught, they will disavow all knowledge of my actions.