Stack Computers: the new wave © Copyright 1989, Philip Koopman, All Rights Reserved.

Chapter 2. A Taxonomy of Hardware Stack Support

2.2 TAXONOMY NOTATION AND CATEGORIES

2.2.1 Notation

In order to convey the category for a particular architecture, we shall use a three character shorthand notation based on the three axes of classification. The first letter of the abbreviation specifies the number of stacks (Single or Multiple). The second letter of the abbreviation specifies the size of dedicated stack memory (Small or Large). The third letter of the abbreviation specifies the number of operands in the instruction format (0, 1, or 2). Thus, the abbreviation SS0 would signify an architecture with a single stack, small dedicated stack memory, and 0-operand addressing and the abbreviation ML2 would signify an architecture with multiple stacks, large dedicated stack memory, and 2-operand addressing.

2.2.2 List of the categories in the design space

Table 2.1 shows the categorization of existing and historical stack oriented architectures by taxonomy category. Appendix A briefly discusses each of these architectures and how they implement features related to the taxonomy. 

Category  Machines

 SS0       Aerospace Computer, Burroughs family, Caltech Chip,

             EULER, GLOSS, HITAC-10, ITS, LAX2, Mesa,

             Microdata 32/S, Transputer, WD9000

 SS1       AAMP, Buffalo Stack Machine, EM-1, HP300/HP3000,

             ICL2900, IPL-VI, MCODE, MU5, POMP Pascal

 SS2       Intel 80x86

 SL0       G Machine, NORMA

 SL1       AADC, Micro-3L

 SL2       AM29000, CRISP, Dragon, Pyramid 90x, RISC I, SOAR

 MS0       Action Processor, APL Language Machine, FORTRAN

             Machine, HUT, Internal Machine, MISC M17,

             Rockwell Microcontrollers, Symbol, Tree Machine

 MS1       PDP-11

 MS2       Motorola 680x0

 ML0       ALCOR, An ALGOL Machine, FRISC 3, KDF-9, Kobe

             University Machine, MF1600, NC4016, OPA, PASCAL

             Machine, QFORTH, Reduction Language Machine,

             Rekursive, RTX 2000, RTX 32P, RUFOR, The Forth

             Engine, TM, Vaughan & Smith's Machine, WISC

             CPU/16, WISC CPU/32

 ML1       Lilith, LISP machines, SF1, Soviet Machine

 ML2       PSP, SF1, Socrates

Table 2.1. Population of the stack machine taxonomy

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