High-level language computer architecture

A high-level language computer architecture (HLLCA) is a computer architecture designed to be targeted by a specific high-level language, rather than the architecture being dictated by hardware considerations. It is accordingly also termed language-directed computer design, coined in McKeeman (1967) and primarily used in the 1960s and 1970s. HLLCAs were popular in the 1960s and 1970s, but largely disappeared in the 1980s. This followed the dramatic failure of the Intel 432 (1981) and the emergence of optimizing compilers and reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architecture and RISC-like CISC architectures, and the later development of just-in-time compilation for HLLs. A detailed survey and critique can be found in Ditzel & Patterson (1980).

HLLCAs date almost to the beginning of HLLs, in the Burroughs large systems (1961), which were designed for ALGOL 60 (1960), one of the first HLLs. The most well-known HLLCAs are the Lisp machines of the 1970s and 1980s (for Lisp, 1959). At present the most popular HLLCAs are Java processors, for Java (1995), and these are a qualified success, being used for certain applications. A recent architecture in this vein is the Heterogeneous System Architecture (2012), which HSA Intermediate Layer (HSAIL) provides instruction set support for HLL features such as exceptions and virtual functions; this uses JIT to ensure performance.

There is a wide variety of systems under this heading. The most extreme example is a Directly Executed Language, where the instruction set architecture of the computer equals the instructions of the HLL, and the source code is directly executable with minimal processing. In extreme cases the only compilation required is tokenizing the source code and feeding the tokens directly to the processor; this is found in stack-oriented programming languages running on a stack machine. For more conventional languages the HLL statements are grouped into instruction + arguments, and infix order is transformed to prefix or postfix order. DELs are typically only hypothetical, though they were advocated in the 1970s.

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