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Analysis of Amiga Virtual Processor ASM

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stuff-to-poke-at dept.

An anonymous reader sent us an analysis of the new Amiga Virtual Processor assembly Language -- unlimited registers, register naming, high-level looping constructs, a tool-based architecture, and object-based assembly programming, complete with some cool examples.

1 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. The point of this by victim · · Score: 4

    This article doesn't really convey the point of the Tao Group's technology. Sure its a nifty assembler, but programmers middle aged and above will remember that assemblers used to be very much like this back when humans used them. Thats not new. (Dang whippernappers always thinking they're inventing repiration.)

    The point behind the Tao stuff is that all of your code is built to the virtual assembly language and shipped as the virtual machine code. It is translated to local machine code as needed on the target system (and cached as appropriate for that system, eg. once forver to disk for desktop PCs).

    This means one version of the application that runs on any (supported) target processor. It also means your final executable code is optimized for your particular processor, say K7 instead of just generic IA32 instruction set.

    Tao has been add this since at least 1995, maybe earlier. They have good technology. Maybe its even useful. :-)