16 Aug
2008
16 Aug
'08
1:36 a.m.
4700 FCS was very much a proprietary hardware and
software product. All
programming for the IBM 4702 processor was conducted with an IBM
mainframe based language called 4700 Finance Communication Language
(FCL). 4700 FCL essentially used the IBM mainframe Assembler Language
macro capability to generate 4700 FCL op codes, which in turn were
downloaded to the IBM 4702 and interpreted by the 4700 microcode. If one
has a creative imagination and compares 4700 FCL to today's modern world
of programming, 4700 microcode interpretation of 4700 FCL op codes is
similar in concept to the Microsoft .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR)
and its interpretation of Microsoft Intermediate Language (IL)
instruction codes."
One has to be careful with IBM's terminology. Opcodes are called
microinstructions, and they are executed ("interpreted") by the microcode
(i.e. the processor). So microcode in IBM's terminology is always
interpreted by the processor (what else should a processor do?). This
doesn't mean that there must be an additional interpreter written in
machine code that interpretes the op codes. However this is what IBM did
e.g. with the 5110 and its built in System/3 and System/360 interpreters
which are written in PALM microinstructions which in turn is "interpreted"
by the processor. So either IBM did something similar for the 4702, or
the 4702 processor directly executes FCL opcodes.
Christian