Interpretive execution of real-time control applications

Abstract

Interpretive execution has often been regarded as too slow for real-time control applications. Assembly language implementations, however, may exhaust available memory long before running out of machine cycles. For such applications, interpretation of a virtual machine language (VML) is attractive if it yields substantial memory savings at a tolerable cost in execution time. This paper discusses the design of a VML and interpreter which have been used to implement a real-time control application.Performance is evaluated relative to an assembly language version of the same problem.The assembly language version executed 4.8 times faster than the interpretive version, but required 31% more memory.Space compaction is achieved by making basic operations in the application area primatives of the VML.The interpreter simulates a computer whose machine language is the VML. In addition to conserving memory, this approach can facilitate the implementation of a high-level prograrmning language on a variety of minicomputers.