Language-specific CPUs was Re: uIEC/SD == AWESOME!

[Sridhar Ayengar]

Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 31 Dec 2008 at 13:27, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
> 
>>> (Interesting question, though - I wonder what a CPU might look like where you 
>>> could just throw C source code at it, for instance :)
>> Well, there *was* the AT&T Hobbit:
>>
>> 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Hobbit
>>
>> Not quite that, but still optimized for C, allegedly. Never worked with
>> the architecture myself.
> 
> Well, the Burroughs B5000 was purportedly an Algol machine; there 
> have been CPU designs to eat UCSD Pascal bytecodes and Java bytecodes 
> and there have been various LISP machines.  But none, AFAIK, to 
> actually lexically parse program text input in hardware.  I suppose 
> 1401 Autocoder might be in that league, if you consider Autocoder to 
> be a "language".

The Timex TM100 chip does BASIC in hardware, but it doesn't parse the 
text itself...  it requires a tokenized stream.

Peace...  Sridhar