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.tl '1978 Thesis - M.Young''Page 7.%'
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.tl ''Microprogram Translator / Emulator''
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Uses of the D-Machine.
.pg
The D-Machine emulator is intended to be used primarily for
teaching microprogramming. For this reason it contains several
debugging features.
.pg
It can, however, be used for running emulations of other machines.
In particular, a set of micro-processor emulations could be developed
which could be used to test programmes assemled by the cross-assemblers
available on the system. This would be particularly useful if a
large group of students had to write programmes for a particular
micro-processor, as there would normally be a shortage of actual
micro-processors available. I realise that a programme intended to
drive special hardware could be hard to emulate, but in many cases,
simple driver routines have already been written to interface with the
hardware, and the programme to be written need only deal with other
routines. In these cases, routines could be loaded into the D-Machine
which would tell the user what the hardware would be doing.
.pg
Another use of the emulator would be to evaluate new processors
without having to own one. A library of processor emulations could
be constructed, containing emulations of both real and hypothetical
machines.
.pg
The 32 bit word length, and excellent shift and mask operations
of the D-Machine make it capable of emulating machines with
any desired word length. Word lengths larger than 32 bits take
more steps to process, as they have to be handled as multiple
words.
harder to manage, but can still be handled.
.pg
