Warren's Abstract Machine: A Tutorial Reconstruction

51 points
1/21/1970
4 days ago
by nextos

Comments


herodotus

For those who need some context: In 1983 David Warren published a paper describing an abstract machine that could be used as the target of a Prolog compiler. This machine became the basis of most Prolog compilers - it is much faster than interpreters. His paper was not easy to understand. Hasan Air-Kaci's book was a brilliant exposition of Warren's work, and was a must-read for anyone serious about working on Prolog interpreters or compilers.

2 days ago

jfengel

Note that this is Professor David HD Warren. As opposed to Professor David S Warren, who led the XSB Prolog team. Which is built around the Warren Abstract Machine.

2 days ago

NetMageSCW

Reminds me of helping a doctoral student with his implementation of WAM and understanding of the storage system I had written for a combined Lisp/Prolog interpreter.

He was adding the compiler to the system. We used a subroutine threaded machine to execute the WAM instructions (thank you, Byte TIL issue).

a day ago

Milpotel

Oh dear, that reminds me of one of my courses I had to take where we had to memorise the WAM and execute it on paper in the exam. Most useless course ever.

4 days ago

YeGoblynQueenne

That's cruelty. Where did this happen?

3 days ago

Milpotel

Many years ago in Germany.

2 days ago

[deleted]
2 days ago