Skip to main content

Formalising the design of an SECD chip

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Hardware Specification, Verification and Synthesis: Mathematical Aspects

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 408))

Abstract

We describe work completed on a custom SECD chip which is powerful enough to run a LispKit compiler. The 20,000 transistor design was fabricated in 1988 and is being interfaced to a workstation so that it can run downloaded programs. We discuss the evolution of the architecture from its abstract specification and abstraction issues that arose at key levels in the verification of the design. The verification is being undertaken in Cambridge HOL. One hard issue (garbage collection) has been left over for a second iteration of the specification and verification.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. W. Burge. Recursive programming techniques. Addison-Wesley, New York, 1975.

    Google Scholar 

  2. A. J. Field and P. G. Harrison. Functional programming. Addison-Wesley, New York, 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  3. M. J. Hermann, G. Birtwistle, B. Graham, and T. Simpson. The architecture of Henderson's SECD machine. Research Report 89/340/02, Computer Science Department, University of Calgary, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  4. P. Henderson. Functional programming; applications and implementation. Prentice Hall, London, 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  5. I. A. Mason. The Semantics of Destructive Lisp. Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford, 1986.

    Google Scholar 

  6. I. A. Mason. Verification of Programs that Destructively Manipulate Data. Science of Computer Programming, 10:177–210, 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  7. T. F. Melham. Abstraction mechanisms for hardware verification. In G. Birtwistle and P. A. Subrahmanyam, editors, VLSI Specification, Verification and Synthesis, pages 267–291, Norwell, Massachusetts, 1988. Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  8. G. D. Plotkin. Call-by-name, call-by-value, and the lambda calculus. Theoretical Computer Science, 1(1):125–159, 1975.

    Google Scholar 

  9. T. Simpson, G. Birtwistle, B. Graham, and M. J. Hermann. A compiler for LispKit targetted at Henderson's SECD machine. Research Report 89/339/01, Computer Science Department, University of Calgary, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Miriam Leeser Geoffrey Brown

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Graham, B., Birtwistle, G. (1990). Formalising the design of an SECD chip. In: Leeser, M., Brown, G. (eds) Hardware Specification, Verification and Synthesis: Mathematical Aspects. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 408. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-97226-9_23

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-97226-9_23

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-97226-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-34801-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics