Axiom based architecture

• Authors: Conrad Mueller
• Venue: ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News
• Year: 2012

The paper proposes an axiom based architecture as an alternative to the von Neumann model. The model has many desirable properties: fine-grained parallelism, simple semantics, better security and easy of programming. The empirical research gives some indication of its performance potential. A description is given as to how algebraic arithmetic expressions of relations can be broken up into primitive expressions consisting of a single operation. These primitive relations are shown to be sufficient to describe a Turing machine. Eight inference rules are given that define how the primitive relations can be evaluated. An outline is given of an architecture based on these inference rules. Finally a brief description is given of an experimental emulation and empirical evaluation of the architecture. Instead of manipulating data or values by applying instructions or functions, computation is applying existing elements to relations to create new elements. The element's identifier determines which relations the element applies to. The relation determines the identifier of the new element and the operation that needs to be applied to create the value of the new element. The conceptually indices are different in this model. Instead of seeing an index as an offset into an array, an index is seen as part of the element identifier. This enables infinitely many relations to be defined between unique sets using universal quantifiers. Thus every element, or value, computed has a unique description.