Some Aspects of High-Level Microprogramming

The design of high-level microprogramming languages poses problems t~hat are not ordinarily encountered in the software domain. Some of the more important are the phenomenon of microparallelism, the need for microcode optimization, the variability in computer microarchitectures, and, above all, the inherent machine-specificity of microprograms. These problems are discussed within a general architectural framework and a number of strategies and language design philosophies for solving them are described. They include machine-oriented languages such as Eckhouse's MPL [ECKH71] and Patterson's STRUM [PATT76]; DeWitt's EMPL, an extensible language [DEWI76a]; VMPL, an abstract machine-independent language designed by Malik and Lewis [MALI78]; and the microprogramming language schema S* proposed by Dasgnpta [DASG78]. The structure of S* is described in some detail.

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