The Design of a Programmable Computer: A Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis

Abstract

A survey is made of the contemporary state of program construction and subsequently the isolation of the areas where errors and programming difficulties creep in. A machine architecture which attacks these difficulties is then presented, first in its larger outlines, and then a more detaiIed exposition of its operation. FinalIy, this machine architecture, which is based on block structure, is quantitatively compared to two ''standard'' machines (the IBM S/360 and the DEC PDP-10). The results of this comparison is that one should expect superior performance from the block structured machine herein presented, perhaps by as much as a factor of two.