Snakes the Idea
Richard Weyhrauch (IBUKI)

Introduction

This psge contains a copy of the spec for the powerpoint slides we made for a presentation to Intel as a proposal for redesigning processor chips based on a distributed architecture using ontinuations.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Towards a new computation architecture

Key ideas:

  snakes -- byte code computation that threads its way through memory
    bring the instructions to memory rather than visa-versa

  Rum :
    separation of data and control

    continuation combinators correspond to small, powerful instruction set
      appi, appc, ifi, carti, cartc, seqc, [setbi]

    finite state machine over an infinite alphabet

  Small number of bits of agreed upon data types and operations that
    are ubiquitous

  Multitasking synchronization == ability to have discrete steps
    tick executes instruction
    between ticks is motion [routing to deliver / send msg]

  Symbolic address space

Computation is FSM + pointer manipultion + dmops

Snake on Grid picture

      -  -  -  -  -  -
    |  |  |  |  |  |  |
      -  -  - o =>o -  -
    |  |  |  ^  |  |  |
      -  - o =>o -  -  -
    |  |  ^  |  |  |  |
      - o =>o -  -  -  -
    |  |  |  |  |  |  |
      -  -  -  -  -  -


Tick picture

        ___                              ___
       /   \                            /   \
      /     \                          /     \
     |      --                        --      |
     |        ->  send .....    rcv ->        |
     |      --                        --      |
      \     /                          \     /
       \___/                            \___/


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------