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I believe the microprocessor from Steele's and Sussman's paper Design of a LISP-based microprocessor [1] used Peano numbers. [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.
by EdwardCoffin 3y ago
I believe the microprocessor from Steele's and Sussman's paper Design of a LISP-based microprocessor [1] used Peano numbers.
[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/359024.359031 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/359024.359031
- cess11 3y agoUnder 10. Discussion they discuss the lack of numbers and how they're using CONS as a kind of 'add 1' and CAR/CDR as a kind of 'subtract 1' when calculating positions in memory, similar to how integer index/pointers might be used on a different type of machine, as if the length of a list would be an implicit pointer. They seem almost giddy about having designed a computer that can perform interesting mathematical tasks like integrals and derivatives without numbers.