A macromodular meta machine
William E. Ball · 1967
The macromodular concept makes it possible to easily change the hardware design of a computer. However, a change in computer design usually implies that any existing software will no longer function correctly. It appears, then, that a flexibility in the software, equivalent to that now available in the hardware, must somehow be obtained. One possible partial solution to this problem is to separate some of the software activities, such as the compiling function, from the main computational machine. This suggests that what is needed is to add a "compiler module" to the set of available macromodules. That is, a small fixed macromodular computer is needed which would accept as input a source language specification and a target machine specification. It would then input a source language program for compilation. Its final output would be a machine language program for direct execution in the target machine. This paper describes in detail the results of an effort to design such a computer, called the "meta machine." It also illustrates the relative ease with which a new computer may be designed when the macromodular system is used.