Functional Characteristics of a Multilingual Processor

This paper describes the functional characteristics of the Standard Computer MLP-900 processor. This microprogrammable processor is designed for general-purpose emulation of a wide variety of known processors as well as being adaptable to new general-purpose and special-purpose applications. Two approaches to the design of microprogrammed processors, namely minimally encoded and highly encoded, are considered. The significant architectural properties that provide the multilingual capability are discussed. A target language-execution strategy for the MLP-900 is presented followed by a problem-oriented target instruction set which provides for packed field operations. Finally, some projected uses of the processor are considered.