Hi, this one is primarily for Chuck.

a while ago while idly searching for info about the VAX 8600
I came accross an article by Gee, Melvin, and Patt: The
implementation of Prolog via VAX 8600 microcode. Then I could
still read that article on the net, found by Google, today the
best I can give you is the citation on ACM's web site, but
reading the paper isn't free:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=19538&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=424041&CFTOKEN=21821294

Anyway, the bottom line is they have reprogrammed the 8600's
microcode to implement some Prolog primitives and thus boosted
the performance of 8600 with Prolog. They used mainly the space
for the PDP-11 compatibility code for their Prolog additions.

Now, while this alone is pretty cool and reason to get an
8600 and use that trick, I wonder if the same approach could
be used (a) on other VAXen (like the 6000's) and (b) if it could
be used to improve Java performance on the VAX. Wouldn't it
be cool if the old iron could keep up to pace with the Java
stuff?

If the CISC design could be put to good use by taking care of
some of the costly Java primitives?

Also, I wonder how such additions go together with the
operating system. But as far as I remember the above-
mentioned article, all they had to do is load the
microcode hack from floppy via console before booting the
OS. I think it even was BSD.

just curious what y'all think :-)

-Gunther

-- 
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D.                    gschadow@regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist      Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor        Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960                         http://aurora.regenstrief.org