Project P8

This project plans to construct a simple virtual computer.

The goal of the project, if any, is to build a simple virtual world where all its code pieces are modularized, easy to understand, reason about and hence easy to maintain and reuse. In other words, code quality is over everything, all code pieces should present crystal clear human-understandable logic. Performance and size optimizations are almost always the last concerns.

So, basically, this is like a minecraft game for a CS SysNet PhD (hopefully more insteresting and meaningful than those other computer games that ends up with absolutely nothing).

Progress

• VM with basic opcodes working, can run a fabonacci program

TODO list

• Syscall for simple IO
• VM in javascript
• Asm parser and compiler, in javascript and go
• A tictactoe game and AI

Tentative Plan

Design new arch and languages:

• P8 is a register-based machine that runs a simple RISC ISA
• IR8 is an SSA-like intermediate representation for a compiler
• G is a high-level programming language

Write some code for the new arch and languages:

• p8/opcode P8 RISC opcode
• p8/vm P8 simulator
• p8/asm P8 assembler
• p8/i8 IR8 interpreter
• p8/i8c IR8 to P8 compiler
• p8/gc G to P8 (via IR8) compiler
• p8/web a web-based user interface for the machine
• p8/web/vm the vm interpreter but in javascript
• p8/cc a full-fledged C compiler, compile to P8 via IR8
• p8/goc a full-fledged golang compiler, compile to P8 via IR8

At this time, all the previous code written in go language should be able to port into P8 framework without modification. (An alternative plan could be rewrite everything above in G language.)

I know this project just sounds crazy... so please don't expect me to finish it in 100 years.

Help Needed

If you are also interested, help is always welcomed. Feel free to fork. My contact: liulonnie@gmail.com