Machine Language Instructions Research Articles

Conditional Interpretation of Operation Codes

A method, called conditional interpretation, is proposed which will allow small computers to have as large a set of instructions as may be desired without using a large number of bits to hold the operation code. The method is based on the redundancy of machine language sequences. Most machine language instructions have a limited number of reasonable successors. For example load accumulator hardly ever follows enter accumulator. It turns out that if each is allowed seven successors plus an instruction, only about one out of every five instructions needs to be an escape to get to one of the less usual successors. Seventy-five percent of the time the desired next instruction is among the seven permitted successors. Since each has its own, possibly unique, set of successors, the interpretation of the stored op-code is conditional upon the state of the machine.

Introduction to digital computers and automatic programming.

The vastly increased capabilities that computers offer the bio-medical research worker are primarily due to the utilization of high-speed digital computers. The techniques of automatic programming are attempts to lighten the load of the programmer and coder, by making the computer itself help prepare the program or code, minimizing the amount of writing a programmer need do. From a functional point of view, three types of automatic programs can be distinguished: the algebraic automatic program that can understand a code written almost directly in the usual algebraic symbols; the data-manipulation automatic program that greatly facilitates the handling of large masses of data; and the simulation automatic program, which greatly facilitates model building on the computer. The role of the automatic program is to translate pseudoinstructions, that nearly resemble ordinary language, into direct computer or machine language instructions. In this tutorial paper, the basic concepts of the machine language are described first, and then a sketch of some of the techniques for composing and utilizing automatic programming languages is given.