21 Oct
2006
21 Oct
'06
9:57 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
While it's true that stack-based architectures can provide a lot of
bang-for-the-buck, like single-accumulator machines, it's difficult
to leverage parallelsim to improve performance.
Well all the stack machines I have seen are FORTH or PASCAL or SMALL-C.
The code generation is simple 1 pass recusive complier. Once you stop
and do better code generation your stack access is cleaned up.
I'd venture that it's awfully difficult to
design a stack machine
that can compete with a 3-address architecture with a large register
file, multiple pipelined functional units and instruction scheduling.
That is because your stack is unrolled into the register file.
Would you consider the Burroughs B5000 to be a stack
machine?
Cheers,
Chuck
.