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

[Jules Richardson]

Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 1 Jan 2009 at 9:51, Rick Bensene wrote:
> 
>> Yes, the Wang 2200-series machines used a microcoded architecture that
>> implemented a BASIC interpreter as a native "language".  
> 
> Like an IBM 5150 without any disks?  

Sounds like Rick's saying that the interpreter essentially ran within the 
CPU's microcode though, rather than in any kind of external ROM.

I'm really not sure where the distinction between assembly and 'not assembly' 
should lie, though. What does a stream of tokenised BASIC or Java bytecode 
count as? It's not the language in it's original (source) form, so the CPU 
doesn't "directly run" BASIC or Java (more like it runs assembled code, albeit 
using pretty coarse instructions).

I'm not sure what the benefit would be in a CPU where human-readable source 
could be thrown at it, though; it'd likely be a lot less efficient than 
something requiring a compilation step. That doesn't mean someone hasn't 
tried. Heck, I suppose you could take a PC with some form of bidirectional 
data bus (a parallel port, say) which accepted whatever data you wanted - 
enact on the data fed to it and as a self-contained box, call the entire PC a 
"CPU".

cheers

Jules