Most Prolog machines have been based on specialized atchitecturns. Our goal is to start with a general purpose architecture and determine a minimal set of extensions for high performance Prolog execution. We have developed both the architecture and optimizing compiler simultaneously, drawing on results of previous implementations. We hnd that most Prolog specific operations can bc done satisfactorily in software: however, there is a crucial set of features that the architecturc must support to achieve the best Prolog performance. The emphasis of this paper is on our architecture and instruction set. The costs and benefits of the special architecturaI features and instructions are analyzed. Simulated perfonmmce results are presented and indicate. a peak compiled Prolog pcrformancc of 3.68 million logical inferences per second.
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