Perspex machine: V. Compilation of C programs

Perspex machine: VI. A graphical user interface to the perspex machine

“…The GUI is presently used by a C to perspex compiler, 5 but it is equally useful to any compiler that generates descriptions of perspexes in the interchange language. We intend to develop this language as perspex research progresses.…”

“…The C to perspex compiler 5 generates code in a perspex-interchange-language that the present GUI can read and write. The interchange language uses only Turing symbols, but this is sufficient to communicate between the compiler and the GUI, because they are Turing computable.…”

Perspex Machine X: software development

“…5 This compiler generates code in terms of the projective perspexinstruction that is used to prove the Turing completeness of the perspex machine; 2 but this instruction is far more difficult to use than the general-linear instruction introduced with the universal perspex machine. 7 The new compiler uses the general-linear form of the instruction.…”

“…At each branch point it uses a jumper 5,7 to return control to the main fibre. This has the effect of pruning out an exponentially increasing number of branching fibres, thereby greatly increasing the efficiency of perspex programs as measured by the number of neurons required to implement an algorithm.…”

“…All previous perspex compilers, 5 GUIs, 3,6 and simulators 3,6 were one-off research developments aimed at supporting the C programming language. This language was chosen as a target because it is a relatively simple language that exercises much of the imperative programming paradigm, and because there are good compiler-generator tools for C. In future, we expect to switch effort to developing a specialist language for the perspex machine, but, for the time being, the discipline of implementing a standard language is beneficial.…”