10 Jul
2024
10 Jul
'24
8:36 a.m.
It appears that Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> said:
> portable implementation language by
'compiling' the
> high-level CISC VAX instructions (and addressing modes)
> into sequences of RISC instructions.
This idea, emulating one machine on another by translating strings of
instructions (basic blocks in compiler-ese) is quite old. I don't know
who did it first, and would be interested to hear if anyone knows,
although I expect it was reinvented multiple times.
It used to be harder because programs would store into the instruction
stream but these days code is all read-only it's quite standard. I'm
typing this on my M1 Macbook using an editor that thinks it's running
on an x86.
R's,
John