Microprogramming—Another look at internal computer control

Abstract

The internal control of a computer is directed by the instruction. The instruction causes a sequence of steps (or microinstructions) to occur which interpret the instruction. This interpretation of an instruction can be implemented by a storage media called a control store. The programs written for this media are called microprograms. The recent availability of fast READ-WRITE bipolar storage media now makes possible the rapid changing of content of this storage and hence makes possible computer organizations which can interpret a wide variety of different types of instructions. These computer organizatios are called soft machine architectures. It is also possible to conceive of new "machine languages" or directly executable languages which are specially developed as an intermediate level between a specific higher level language and the microprogrammable machine.