Re: What is the absolute smallest instruction set do you need to make a working computer?

Subject	Re: What is the absolute smallest instruction set do you need to make a working computer?
Newsgroups	alt.comp.os.windows-10, alt.windows7.general, comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips, comp.sys.intel, alt.comp.hardware.amd.x86-64
References	(2 earlier) <qm6ibe$pnm$1@news.mixmin.net> <ap-dnUOrRe8QYRvAnZ2dnUU7-QfNnZ2d@giganews.com> <qm6uuc$vvr$1@dont-email.me> <mZGdnWDii-WUnRrAnZ2dnUU7-UWdnZ2d@giganews.com> <qm750f$oga$1@dont-email.me>
From	Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com>
Date	2019-09-22 08:59 -0400
Message-ID	<3ImdnXOXwbOG7RrAnZ2dnUU7-e3NnZ2d@giganews.com> (permalink)

Cross-posted to 5 groups.

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On 9/22/2019 1:47 AM, Jeff Barnett wrote:
> The machine I'm trying to recall is Turing Complete. In other words it 
> can implement an interpreter that can "execute" any Turing machine with 
> any input tape - it's a theoretical machine. If you are talking about a 
> machine with real components, that's a horse of a different color and 
> quite puny in comparison. This 2 register machine, with few instructions 
> was all the theoretical rage some 60 or 70 years ago and was described 
> in many text books. I thought your original question was fishing for 
> what I described.

Well, I don't know anything about "Turing Complete" machines. If such 
Turing machines can be run through any current general purpose computer 
architecture, then this theoretical machine should be able to run it too.

The concept is not about artificial intelligence, but about general 
purpose computing at its most basic level. About 2 or 3 decades ago, we 
had the debate about RISC vs. CISC architectures. Without getting into 
debates about which of those concepts won in the end, this is taking 
that debate to the next level, and asking what is the most basic set of 
instructions that can eliminate all other instructions? So they've 
eliminated every other instruction, and replaced it with this one 
instruction, called SUBLEQ, "Subtract Less Than or Equal To". It only 
does subtractions on data, and branches only when the result is less 
than or equal to zero. So this is the ultimate RISC architecture, the 
OISC (One Instruction Set Computing) architecture.

The page below links to an OISC interpreter and tools.

Oleg Mazonka - Languages - SUBLEQ
http://mazonka.com/subleq/

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