Stack Based Computers
Stack based computers will be the next scripted podcast for Carpetbomberz Inc.
If you don’t know what a stack-based computer is, do a Google search and apart from the Wikipedia entries on it, there’s some interesting ACM papers. For embedded CPUs that need hard real-time performance, it’s the only way to go. But what about general purpose stack-based machines? Well a company that we know so little about today, once showed the whole world the superior technology contained in the stack-based architecture. Burroughs released the B5000 mainframe back in 1963. And with that machine a number of big firsts were accomplished in the Computer industry. The first computer designed based on the software requirements for the machine. First OS written in a high level language ( version of ALGOL). The architecture still exists today in the Unisys architecture called, ClearPath. It’s definitely lasted a while.
The architect of the B5000 would eventually leave Burroughs to become a faculty member at the Computer Science Dept. at the University of Utah. And that became a hot bed for a lot of advances in Computer Graphics as it turns out. It’s amazing that the University of Utah was such a vibrant community, the way we think of Stanford U. in the early 1980′s.
I still haven’t really scripted the whole program yet. I may just launch into despite my ignorance and see what I come up with. Still I find stack-based computers endlessly fascinating.
