Microprogrammable Processor for Object-Oriented Architecture

An advanced microprocessor has been developed for the high performance execution of object oriented language programs. In object oriented languages, improvement of frequent or complex operations such as dynamic type checking, procedure calls, and storage management, contributes toward the increase of overall performance. In order to improve their performance, the microprocessor adopts large on-chip register files, a large EPROM for microstore, and ingenious instruction dispatching and tag-handling mechanisms. By specially treating frequently accessed data, i.e., allocating activation records in register files, much of the data traffic can be effectively localized within the chip, and the complexity of procedure calls as well as the burden imposed on storage management can be alleviated. The tag-handling mechanisms efficiently perform dynamic type checking. As the result, the microprocessor, together with an efficient microprogram, executes object oriented language programs much faster than existing computers. Furthermore, it can efficiently execute other high-level languages by using corresponding microprograms, especially AI-languages.