Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack

From	anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack
Date	2013-10-16 12:27 +0000
Organization	Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Message-ID	<2013Oct16.142753@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> (permalink)
References	<l3hjj8$nt6$1@dont-email.me> <f82ddbef-67eb-43d0-a299-1853a48a1b49@googlegroups.com>

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krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org writes:
>Now, would I design a Forth system today using an integrated stack? I don't=
> know. I don't use Forth on microcontroller or embedded device platforms, a=
>nd, there, the motivation for separated stacks may be compelling.

Well, Stephen Pelc argued that integrated stacks may be the wave of
the future for embedded systems, because there is some embedded ARM
with FP coming out (i.e., the Novix/RTX argument again).

The imagined motivation is to save the FP stack pointer and the memory
area for the FP stack.  But, if you have a good Forth compiler, you
need neither the FP stack pointer nor a memory area for the FP stack
(details below).  Actually, with such a compiler, you only need one
stack pointer and one memory area that contains data stack items, FP
stack items, return stack items, and locals.

Details: In the "typical programs" assumed above the stack depth is
always known statically to the compiler, i.e., no unbalanced IFs and
no loop bodies that consume more stack items than they produce or vice
versa.  Most programs do that already, so that's no big restriction.

A more problematic issue is EXECUTE and DEFER.  Here the program would
have to tell the compiler the stack effect of the called word in the
general case.  I think that an embedded systems programmer who uses FP
will find that much less cumbersome than to use the data stack for FP.

You can find a bit more on this in my PAF paper
<http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/euroforth/ef13/papers/ertl-paf.pdf>.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2013: http://www.euroforth.org/ef13/

Thread

Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-10-14 16:18 -0400
  Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-10-14 10:34 -1000
    Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-14 15:41 -0500
    Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-10-14 20:32 -0700
      Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-10-15 17:14 -0400
    Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-15 16:22 +0000
  Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-14 15:42 -0500
    Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2013-10-16 11:16 +0200
  Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-15 16:09 +0000
  Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2013-10-15 18:51 -0700
    Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-16 03:47 -0500
    Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-16 12:27 +0000
      Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-10-25 14:20 -0400
        Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-10-25 12:08 -0700
          Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-10-26 02:34 -0400
            Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-10-26 00:13 -0700
              Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-10-25 21:49 -1000
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-10-26 01:26 -0700
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-26 05:45 -0500
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-26 13:48 +0000
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-26 14:28 -0500
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-27 12:41 +0000
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-27 08:31 -0500
                ?DUP (was: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-28 15:19 +0000
                Re: ?DUP Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-28 13:54 -0500
                Re: ?DUP "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnohavenotit.cnm> - 2013-10-28 16:30 -0400
                Re: ?DUP "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-10-28 11:11 -1000
                Re: ?DUP anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-29 11:51 +0000
                Re: ?DUP Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-10-29 16:48 +0100
                Re: ?DUP anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-29 16:10 +0000
                Re: ?DUP albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-10-29 16:24 +0000
                Re: ?DUP Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-10-29 20:00 +0100
                Re: ?DUP anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-30 07:44 +0000
                Re: ?DUP Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-29 16:29 -0500
                Re: ?DUP "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnohavenotit.cnm> - 2013-10-29 18:58 -0400
                Re: ?DUP Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-30 03:15 -0500
                Re: ?DUP albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-10-30 01:14 +0000
                Re: ?DUP anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-30 08:22 +0000
                Re: ?DUP "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnohavenotit.cnm> - 2013-10-30 08:03 -0400
                Re: ?DUP anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-30 12:24 +0000
                Re: ?DUP Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-30 12:44 -0500
                Re: ?DUP "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-10-30 22:43 +0000
                Re: ?DUP anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-31 12:09 +0000
                Re: ?DUP Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-31 12:23 -0500
                Re: ?DUP (was: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack) "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnohavenotit.cnm> - 2013-10-28 16:30 -0400
                Re: ?DUP "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-10-28 11:16 -1000
                Re: ?DUP Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-10-29 01:58 +0100
                Re: ?DUP Stefan Mauerhofer <smauerhofer@androsoft.ch> - 2013-10-28 18:41 -0700
                Re: ?DUP Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-29 04:37 -0500
                Re: ?DUP m.a.m.hendrix@tue.nl - 2013-10-29 04:27 -0700
                Re: ?DUP anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-29 12:51 +0000
              Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-10-26 09:45 +0000
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-10-26 11:30 +0000
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-26 08:05 -0500
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack mhx@iae.nl - 2013-10-26 06:09 -0700
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@nohavenotit.com> - 2013-10-27 03:01 -0400
                Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-10-26 22:23 -1000
            Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-10-26 09:39 +0000
              Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-10-26 09:44 +0000
  Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Ed" <invalid@invalid.com> - 2013-10-18 14:09 +1000
    Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-10-17 21:21 -1000
      Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Ed" <invalid@invalid.com> - 2013-10-19 12:14 +1000
        Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-10-18 17:17 -1000
          Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-10-19 02:58 -0700
          Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Ed" <invalid@invalid.com> - 2013-10-27 22:33 +1100
            Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack mhx@iae.nl - 2013-10-27 06:21 -0700
              Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack "Ed" <invalid@invalid.com> - 2013-10-29 22:40 +1100
            Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-10-27 08:23 -0500
  Re: Floating Point : To Stack or Not To Stack Stefan Mauerhofer <smauerhofer@androsoft.ch> - 2013-10-28 18:38 -0700

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