Re: basic parrot questions

[Simon Cozens <address@hidden>]

On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 08:31:00AM -0800, Terrence Brannon wrote:
> Why would a software machine closely emulating CISC architecture 
> be expected to execute as efficiently on RISC and CISC machines?

Have to ask Dan that one. I am not a hardware hacker. However...

> Does it make any sense to create a low-level machine modeled on 
> one-architecture instead of a high-level architecture which can 
> flexibly optimize to either architecture?
 
First of all, I'm not convinced that Parrot's design is all that low
level. It has some low-level elements, and currently that's all that's
there. That's simply because the low-level stuff is the easiest to
implement and get people interested in and playing around with. Sure, I
could implement the regular expression, mapcar, and object despatch ops,
but I thought I'd be better off starting with integer addition. :)

Secondly, the idea of having a virtual which can "flexibly optimize"
to RISC or CISC is not something I'm particularly familiar with. Can
you provide examples?

> Also, I thought Parrot was not "stack-based" If that is the case 
> then why does Overview.pod say this:
> 
> "Registers will be stored in register frames, which can be pushed and
> popped onto the register stack. For instance, a subroutine or a block
> might need its own register frame."

Do you think that makes it stack based?

-- 
Hubris is when you really do have it, enough so only the gods slap you
down. Pretentiousness is when you don't have it, and everyone slaps
you down. Arrogance is somewhere in between. 
    - Thorfinn