::SHE+ILA:: system overview [$02]

More about ::SHE+ILA:: system overview [$02]

::SHE+ILA:: is an experimental special-purpose bit-slice minicomputer, operating system, and programming language. It stands for "Segmented Hierarchical Environment" (the datastore), + "Interactive Language Architecture" (the datapath). As the store is segmented, it is infinitely extensible (using virtual addressing and virtual storage principles), and no linking loader is needed to bind-in subroutines and library modules. Also it is document-oriented (rather than APPlication-oriented), each document occupying a "segment" or array of contiguous datastore pages, and containing a virtual pointer to its class drivers. No serialisation or persistence code (LOAD/SAVE) is needed, as each document is an instance of its class template, and occupies a segment in the datastore. A "checkpointing thread" continually runs in CPU idle time to synchronise the datastore with all the currently "open" documents. The datapath contains the ALU (arithmetic/logic unit) and a barrel of microsequencers (ISP's : Instruction Set Processors) which execute the code at the PC's (Program Counters) for each of the active threads. Communication between ILA and SHE is by means of a protocol called FBI (Fundamental Buffer Interface) -- more of which is described in the next image.