Re: CPU recommendations from an Ada perspective?

[Ada2001 <ada2001@my-deja.com>]

In article <nJEU3.1529$G51.395421@news.wenet.net>,
  "Mike Silva" <mjsilva@jps.net> wrote:
> I'm reluctant to ask this question because it's so vague at this
> point, but my curiosity has won out.  I'd like to hear any
> recommendations for (or against) those 32 bit CPU families which are
> supported by good Ada tools.

The PowerPC architecture seems to be supported by almost all Ada
compiler vendors.

However I've been curious about a somewhat different question: Which
currently popular CPU family, if any, has an architecture that is
especially well suited for Ada code generation?

My company still uses a proprietary 16-bit stack architecture CPU that
was designed with Ada in mind and it works very well for us.

I've read Tucker Taft's paper on compiling Ada into Java byte codes.  I
came away with the impression that, while it is possible to do, the JVM
is not an optimal architecture for Ada.

I'm currently working on start-up code for an Intel 80386EX bare-machine
target and it's no fun at all. It seems every Intel chip, even a Pentium
III, has to act like an 8088 on power-up for reasons of backward
compatibility with DOS and the original PC architecture. The start-up
code needed to configure the chip for 32-bit flat-memory operation is
rather intricate. [BTW: the best description I've seen of the
awkwardness of the Intel architecture is in Robert Dewar's
"Microprocessors: A Programmers View" book.  I was able to get a copy
from a used book store.  Is there any chance of an updated second
edition, Dr. Dewar? :) ].


F. Britt Snodgrass


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