Python CPU

[John Nagle]

On 4/2/2011 9:01 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> There were also Forth chips, which let you run Forth in hardware. I
> believe they were much faster than Forth in software, but were killed by
> the falling popularity of Forth.

     The Forth chips were cute, and got more done with fewer gates than
almost anything else.  But that didn't matter for long.
Willow Garage has a custom Forth chip they use in their Ethernet
cameras, but it's really a FPGA.

     A tagged machine might make Python faster.  You could have
unboxed ints and floats, yet still allow values of other types,
with the hardware tagging helping with dispatch.   But it probably
wouldn't help all that much.  It didn't in the LISP machines.

					John Nagle