Design of a high-speed Prolog machine (HPM)
Ryosei Nakazaki, Akihiko Konagaya, Shinichi Habata, Hideo Shimazu, Mamoru Umemutra, Masahiro Yamamoto, Minoru Yokota, Takashi Chikayama · ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News · 1985
This paper describes a High-speed Prolog Machine (HIM) architecture and its hardware structure, which are developed as a product of Fifth Generation Computer System (FGCS} project in Japan.HIM realizes high performance and provides a practical programming environment.A major HIM feature is a large memory capacity and specialized hardware for unification and stack operations.HIM has a compiler-oriented architecture with high-level stack-control instructions.Furthermore, the HIM architecture provides side-effect operations, nonlocal-exit control and multiprocess support primitives, which are effective to develop system programs.The performance is estimated at 280 KLIPS (Kilo Logical Inferences Per Second) in executing a deterministic "concatenate" Prolog program.The HIM processor is implemented with high-speed CCML {Current Mode Logic) chips and with I00 nanosecond machine cycle.