Stack Computers: the new wave
© Copyright 1996-1997,
Philip Koopman,
All Rights Reserved.
ON-LINE SUPPLEMENT:
Current Stack Hardware
Currently Available Forth/Stack Hardware
- Ultra Technology
including information on several stack CPU chips, including:
- MuP21 -- minimalist
21-bit processor (designed by Chuck Moore)
- F21 -- follow-on chip to
MuP21 (designed by Chuck Moore)
- P8 &
P32 -- 8-bit and 32-bit
designs (by Chuck Moore)
- MPE sells
RTX 2000 systems (designed by Chuck Moore with Bob
Murphy & Greg Bailey)
- Silicon Composers offers:
- The SC32 chip (designed by John Hayes &
Marty Fraeman at JHU/APL).
- RTX 2000 systems (designed by Chuck Moore with
Bob Murphy & Greg Bailey)
- Mountain View Press offers:
- WISC CPU/16 discrete logic CPU (design by Phil
Koopman)
- WISC CPU/32 CPU with close cousins Harris RTX-32P
and BINAR stack CPU chips (designs by Phil Koopman)
- New Micros sells the F68HC11,
which is a register-based CPU with Forth in masked ROM.
- FirmWorks supports the IEEE Std
1275-1994 Open Firmware,
which uses a stack-based abstract execution architecture.
Supplemental material:
- Harold Rabbie (hzrabbie@worldnet.att.net) points out that the Motorola 6809
had, unlike the 6800, two stack registers that could be used to implement an
efficient Forth interpreter.
- I note from my own experience that the 6502 microprocessor also had two
index registers that were useful for Forth interpreters. But, it didn't have
addressing modes that automatically adjusted the pointers for "push"
and "pop" operations.
Starting point for other Stack & Forth information:
Phil Koopman --
koopman@cmu.edu