Re: Guidelines for instruction set design?

gmt@cs.arizona.edu (Gregg Townsend)
Wed, 6 May 2009 16:20:48 +0000 (UTC)

          From comp.compilers

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From: gmt@cs.arizona.edu (Gregg Townsend)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 16:20:48 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: The University of Arizona
References: 09-05-020
Keywords: architecture, design
Posted-Date: 07 May 2009 07:31:38 EDT

  <cyril.cressent@gmail.com> wrote:
> The initial question was about wether there were instructions, design
> rules or anything else that needed to be used in an instruction set if
> you wanted to easily use a high level language on your CPU (ie: easily
> port a compiler).


If you want to avoid headaches, stay compatible with these features
of modern systems that are so common we take them for granted:


        two's-complement arithmetic
        individually addressable characters
        8-bit characters
        16-, 32-, and 64-bit integers
        IEEE floating point representations
        ASCII character set


The C language doesn't require ANY of those, but the first two simplify
its implementation significantly. The rest of those are often assumed
(properly or not) by existing code, including compilers.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gregg Townsend Staff Scientist The University of Arizona
gmt@cs.arizona.edu Computer Science Tucson, Arizona, USA



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