Analysis of the Correspondence between Programming Languages and CPU Instruction Sets

We apply the methods of Ager et al. (2003a,b), used to transform an interpreter into a compiler and virtual machine, to the well defined subsets--C of the programming language C and the subset MIPS64- of the CPU instruction set MIPS64. This is the first application of the methods to non-toy programming languages and CPUs, and the results suggest that the method have applicability in practical language and CPU design. We give--C an operational semantics, that we implement in a direct style interpreter. This machine executing programs in the--C language and later in a compiler and virtual machine that corresponds to the--C interpreter. For MIPS64- the computational content is extracted using the ideas behind the split into compiler and virtual machine from Ager et al. (2003b). We then define a small BASIC like language called MipsL that is especially well suited for compilation to MIPS64-. Finally we use the information extracted so far to suggest a scalar value that measures the fi