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Building the World from First Principles: Declarative Machine Descriptions and Compiler Construction

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Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages (PADL 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 3350))

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Abstract

For at least 25 years, the most effective way to retarget systems software has been by using machine descriptions. But “machine description” doesn’t mean what you think. A traditional machine description does contain information about the machine, but its utility is compromised in one of two ways:

  • The description is useful only in support of a particular algorithm, such as instruction-set emulation, LR parsing, or bottom-up tree matching.

  • Information about the machine is inextricably intertwined with information about a particular tool’s internal representation, such as a compiler’s intermediate code.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University,  

    Norman Ramsey

Authors
  1. Norman Ramsey
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IMDEA Institute for Software Development Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University of New Mexico Universidad Complutense de Madrid,  

    Manuel V. Hermenegildo

  2. School of Computer Science, T.U. Madrid (UPM), Spain

    Daniel Cabeza

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ramsey, N. (2005). Building the World from First Principles: Declarative Machine Descriptions and Compiler Construction. In: Hermenegildo, M.V., Cabeza, D. (eds) Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages. PADL 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3350. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30557-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30557-6_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-24362-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-30557-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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