Microcoding an object-oriented instruction set
David M. Harland, Bruno Beloff · ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News · 1986
Most AI applications are still written in LISP, but the recent growth of interest in object oriented programming has given rise to "shell" systems such as LOOPS and KEE, and, thereby, it has emphasised that there is now a need for an AI engine which will efficiently support an arbitrary number of object classes; it seems that it is no Longer sufficient simply to provide for Lists.This paper will demonstrate how the REKURSIV processor and its OBJEKT store can be microcoded to provide an object oriented instruction set like that defined by the SmallTalk-80 virtual machine, and that doing so can lead to an implementation which will run in excess of 250,000 bytecodes/second, a rate which is considerably faster than commerical SmallTalk systems.