Description
The Berkeley RISC microprocessor, developed under the direction of David Patterson & Carlo Sequin [1], is targeted for efficient execution of C programs. The architecture has competed successfully with existing systems such as the Vax-11/780 and MC68000. A major question about such a reduced, targeted architecture is how well it extends to other languages. An important language in symbolic computation is Lisp. Lisp is a functional language which has little in common with the standard block structured languages, such as C. This has led to the often-asked question -- "will RISC run Lisp?".
The purpose of this paper is to explore the feasibility of a LISP system running on RISC. The major parts of this include a look at the behavior of large-scale "typical" Lisp programs, and an examination of current LISP implementations.