Feb 28, 2020
OMG, check out this "spiritual fork" of Mu that's designing not just the entire software stack to fit in a single person's head, BUT ALSO THE PROCESSOR.

https://github.com/grokthis/ucisc/blob/master/docs/01_Introduction.md

Still super early days. There's a nascent VM. Needless to say, I'll be contributing.

Gimli from Lord of the Rings: "Certainty of death, small chance of sucess... what are we waiting for?"

permalink

* *
Feb 28, 2020
Update on the Mu computer's memory-safe language

Still no type-checking or memory-safety, but we have partial support for arrays and product types. Still several sharp edges:

  • can't index an array with a literal
  • can't index an array with non-power-of-2-sized elements
  • can allocate but not use arrays/records on the stack

My todo list is growing. But work per item is shrinking. Hopefully there's an asymptote.

(More details. Repo.)

permalink

* *
Feb 21, 2020
Update on the Mu computer's memory-safe language

Mu just got its first couple of non-integer types: addresses and arrays. As a result, the factorial app can finally run its tests based on command-line args.

http://akkartik.github.io/mu/html/apps/factorial.mu.html

Addresses are accessed using a '*' operator. Arrays are accessed using an index instruction that takes an address (addr array T) and returns an address (addr T).

Literal indexes aren't supported yet.

Open question: indexing arrays of non-power-of-2 element sizes.

permalink

* *
Feb 15, 2020
My paper's been accepted!

permalink

* *
Feb 15, 2020
I'll be in Porto, Portugal on Mar 24 to present a paper on Mu at the Convivial Computing Salon.

permalink

* *
Feb 10, 2020
A brief timeline of the Mu computing stack

Jul 6, 2014: commit 0, tree-based interpreter for a statement-oriented language

Jul 19, 2017: commit 3930, start of SubX machine code

Sep 20, 2018: started building SubX in SubX

Jul 24, 2019: SubX in SubX done, commit 5461

Oct 2, 2019: started designing the Mu memory-safe language

Oct 29: started http://akkartik.github.io/mu/html/apps/mu.subx.html


Table of recent milestones with line counts and binary sizes
                                                      date    commit  mu.subx   -tests/cmts  binary (KB excl. dead code)
  parsing function headers                            Oct 30  5725      621         277         6.9
  function calls                                      Nov 10  5739     1202         346         7.2
  code-generating primitive instructions              Nov 17  5750     1923         363         7.3
  arguments                                           Nov 30  5785     4038        1330        13
  return values                                       Jan 1   5878     5432        1457        15
  compound types: `addr` and `array`                  Jan 20  5911     6023        1697        16
  local variables and their reclamation               Jan 27  5934     6340        1900        18
  register locals and shadowing                       Jan 27  5940     6498        1940        18
  blocks                                              Jan 29  5948     7455        2534        22
  break/continue instructions                         Jan 30  5964     7871        2558        22
  cleaning up locals in the presence of early exits   Feb 9   6000     8554        2918        26

permalink

* *
Feb 3, 2020
The Agaram Paradox: to get to better interfaces, expose your implementations.

permalink

* *
Jan 31, 2020
I just wrote up a cheatsheet of all the instructions supported by Mu (best on a wide screen/window):

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/akkartik/mu/master/mu_instructions

It's not clean. Mu isn't a clean, well-designed language. Because it's designed to map 1:1 with x86, and x86 is not a clean, well-designed instruction set.

But this sort of 1-page summary of a compiler is something I've always wished I had. Something that doesn't tell you what to type out and then pretend you understand compilers.

permalink

* *
Jan 30, 2020
Update on the Mu computer's memory-safe language

Basic language is done! Here's factorial. (Compare with SubX.)

Still todo:

  • user-defined types
  • type checking and memory-safety

In other words, I'm about a third of the way there 😂 More detailed todo list.

(More details on the Mu project. Repo)


I should probably highlight register names. Here's an updated screenshot.

(Yes, in Mu you manually allocate registers. Mu will eventually check your allocation.)

permalink

* *
Jan 27, 2020
Update on the Mu computer's memory-safe language

Still no type-checking or memory-safety, but we now have local variables.

http://akkartik.name/post/mu-2019-2
https://github.com/akkartik/mu

A simple program in Mu that gratuitously makes use of a temporary variable.

permalink

* *
archive
projects
writings
videos
subscribe
Mastodon
RSS (?)
twtxt (?)
Station (?)