John K. Foderaro
ABSTRACT
The algebraic manipulation system Macsyma [Grou77, Fate80] has been running for over a year on Digital Equipment Corp. VAX-11 large-address-space medium-scale computers [Stre78]. In order to run Macsyma in this environment, a Lisp system for the VAX, FRANZ LISP[Fode50], was constructed at Berkeley. The goal of running Macsyma provided direction and motivation and is partially responsible for the rapid development of the Lisp system.
Because Lisp is a high level language there are many decisions to be made about the internal framework of the system. Efforts to increase efficiency require that we be able to characterize the demands of a large, compiled, Lisp system. Fortunately, the VAX/UNIX operating system provides useful tools for determining such characteristics. This paper presents some of our data and related analysis.
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Index Terms
- Characterization of VAX Macsyma
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