The amber machine

Abstract

The Amber machine is a stack machine designed as an intermediate language for compiling higher-order languages. The current version is specialized for the Amber language. The machine supports a set of basic and structured data types, functional closures, signals, bitmap graphics, persistent objects and meta-level execution. The latter is needed as the Amber compiler is entirely written in Amber (above the Amber machine level) and needs to switch level when executing a program it has just compiled. A set of implementation strategies are admissible for this machine, including byte-code interpretation, threaded code interpretation and compilation to native code. The current implementation is based on a byte-code interpreter and a one-space compacting collector, and runs on a Macintosh.