A new approach to an adaptive computer---an automatic recovery mechanism to prevent the occurrence of subtract errors
Ken Sakamura, Kōichi Nakano, Yoshio Katô, Hideo Aiso · 1979
This paper deals with an automatic recovery mechanism designed to prevent the occurrence of subtract errors at the computer architecture level. This mechanism always detects the occurence of subtract errors whenever addition or subtraction is performed. If a subtract error is detected, backtracking to a certain location is carried out, and from there recomputing is performed in order to realize the required precision. An adaptive algorithm required for this mechanism is described in detail. An experimental adaptive computer was implemented on a Burroughs B1700. The evaluation of the experiments proves that the inherent possibilities of dynamic microprogramming play a very important role in realizing this mechanism, and that the proposed mechanism will be useful for the development of future high-level computer systems.