Abstract
The Vienna Abstract Machine (VAM) is a Prolog machine developed at the TU Wien. In contrast to the standard implementation technique (Warren Abstract Machine — WAM), an inference in VAM is performed by unifying the goal and head immediately, instead of bypassing arguments through a register interface. We present two implementations for VAM: VAM2P and VAM1P . VAM2P is well suited for an intermediate code emulator (e.g. direct threaded code) which uses two instruction pointers for both goal code and head code. During an inference VAM2P fetches one instruction from the goal code, and one instruction from the head code and executes the combined instruction. More optimization is therefore possible, since information about the calling goal and the head of the clause is available at the same time. VAM performs cheap shallow back-tracking, needs less dereferencing and trailing and implements a faster cut. In a Prolog with the occur-check, VAM omits many unnecessary operations. VAM1P is designed for native code compilation. It combines instructions at compile time and supports several optimizations, such as fast last-call optimization. In this paper we present the VAM in detail and compare it with existing machines.
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Krall, A., Neumerkel, U. (1990). The vienna abstract machine. In: Deransart, P., Maluszyński, J. (eds) Programming Language Implementation and Logic Programming. PLILP 1990. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 456. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024180
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024180
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