From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2004-08-23T12:25:45+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby, actors, continuations, Kernel#callcc

In article <41286EBC.6020808@ce.chalmers.se>,
Robert Feldt  <feldt@ce.chalmers.se> wrote:
>zuzu wrote:
>
>>not likely as an advantage over other languages...  such low level
>>design would probably end up looking alot more like the parrot VM than
>>a single-language interpreter, 
>>
>That last part was with tongue-in-cheek. I seriously doubt it would look 
>anything like a Parrot VM though, more than at a very artificial level.
>
>>or at least the development process
>>would allow other languages to follow suit in parallel.
>>
>>  
>>
>Well, what kind of research or open-source development would not?
>
>>however, lisp and smalltalk machines were developed.
>>programming language as the OS is not unheard of.
>>
>>the more things change, the more they stay the same.
>>
>>  
>>
>Sure, but they were trying to build custom chips implementing lisp/st 
>VM's (at least to my knowledge); what would be more 
>up-to-date/interesting now would be to take a certain piece of code (in 
>Ruby or what have you) and compile that part into an FPGA config 
>realizing the same computational process. 

There's certainly work going into converting C to gates especially with 
DSP algorithms.  There is also a company that sells a tool to convert 
MatLab DSP algorithms to FPGA implementations.

Phil