David Schmenk today introduced PLASMA. Â According to David’s write-up,
“PLASMA is a combination of virtual machine and assembler/compiler matched closely to the 6502 architecture. It is an attempt to satisfy a few challenges surrounding code size, efficient execution, small runtime and fast just-in-time compilation. By architecting a unique bytecode that maps nearly one-to-one to the higher level representation, the compiler/assembler can be very simple and execute quickly on the Apple II for a self-hosted environment. A modular approach provides for incremental development and code reuse.”
The project is still in the early phases of development and Schmenk outlines the direction he intends to take PLASMA:
“The original design concept was to create an efficient, flexible, and expressive environment for building applications directly on the Apple II… The ultimate target is to have a complete IDE available for the Apple II… The next step is to write the PLASMA compiler in PLASMA itself to self-host on the Apple II. Along with being self-hosted, a more flexible module file format will be created to allow loading modules on demand and putting the bytecode interpreter and module loader in the RAM card memory, thus freeing up much needed main memory.”
To read the complete details and download a disk image containing a demo of David’s work so far, click here.