Ok, this document will describe protos, ints, blobs, atoms,
slots, and their references.
References in the system were Originally 2 bit, now they are 3
0 - PROTO - Data is a reference
1 - INT - Data is actual int
2 - BLOB - Data is a reference
3 - ATOM - Data is a reference
New Entries
4 - CODE-PROTO - Data is a reference -
Describes a proto that holds the
slots for arguments and locals for a method. This reference is mainly
checked by the PASSTHRU cnd CODE routines.
4 - BLOCK-PROTO - Data is a reference - Describes
a block proto that holds the
slots for arguments and locals for a block. This reference is for
the push instruction so it can easily detect a block that it needs to clone
(which will become a CODE-PROTO).
5 - CONTEXT-PROTO - Describes an activation record in the
stack This is necessary for block protos.
Their variables access variables of some other protos via the stack. Therefore,
the Frame pointer will have to be set to that context.
Upon return, the frame pointer needs to be restored. So, activateSlot will
just have to set
it different, and the previous.
7 - FLOAT
- Data is a reference
ATOMS - Since only 21 bits are allowed in the slot keys, this limits
us to about 2 million unique
strings in the system.
INT - Since there are only 29 bits for integers, and they are signed,
our range is +/- 500 million.
Hopefully, that is enough.
Arrays and Floats could have special attributes in the proto to
handle their special cases rather than have a reference. Could have a 'float
area', for more efficient storage, but using a full proto will be fine
for now.
By going to 3 bit's of data for the reference, the referenced data
must be on an 8 byte boundary.
PROTO's are Aligned on 16 byte boundaries Their bitfields describe
There is a field which describes the number of data slots in use and slots
in use. Data slots are 32 bit fields. Slots are 32 bit fields.
In terms of 32 bit values, here is the structure of a proto on the heap.
0 - Malloc Header/Size - When malloc allocates a block of memory, the
first 32 bit pointer, in general, is the
size parameter. It indicates how many bytes are used (with a 16 byte
alignment, or chunks). We use the lower 4 bits to indicate special properties
of the proto. The high bit is used for indicating a garbage collection
marker.
1 - The size field - This is another field that indicates the allocation
of the bytes within the proto. The lower 16 bits indicate the number of
data slots and key slots. This indicates a maximum of 256 data or key slots.
Later on, we may allow the upper bits to indicate that the object is
a float or an array (in smalltalk this is called an indexed type).
<NEED TO DESCRIBE THIS BETTER>
The first 21 bits are the Atom reference.
The next 3 are the Action types
Finally, the last 8 bits are for the index into the data slots
of the data.
TYPES OF ACTIONS IN SLOTS 3 bit
0 - GET
1 - SET
2 - GETFRAME
3 - SETFRAME
4 - PASSTHRU
5 - CODE
6 - INTRINSIC
7 - ??
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