Charles H. Moore

Charles H. Moore ( born 1938 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania) is the inventor of the Forth programming language and co-founder of Forth, Inc..

Training

Moore grew up in Flint, Michigan, USA, and was the valedictorian of Central High School ( 1956). About a National Merit Scholarship Moore came to MIT and later joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity at. Bachelor of Science in physics, he was born in 1960 with a thesis on data reduction for the gamma-ray satellites Explorer 11 Then he went (1961 ) to Stanford and studied mathematics two years there.

Programmer

He learned Fortran II and some time later Lisp by John McCarthy for the IBM 704 in order to perform calculations for the optical monitoring of satellite orbits, Lunar Observing and controlling the Baker - Nunn cameras at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory ( SAO) (1958). The program to determine the trajectories of satellites he optimized in assembly language. In the course of his mathematics studies at the Faculty of computer science at Stanford University, he learned for the Burroughs B5500 Algol and took the opportunity to so casually at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center ( SLAC ) to optimize the control system for an electron accelerator ( 1961). When Charles H. Moore and Associates, he wrote a Fortran - Algol converter for time-sharing service Real Time Systems, Inc. ( RSI) and programmed including a real-time gas chromatograph on his first minicomputer (1965). For Mohasco Industries, Inc. in Amsterdam, New York, he learned COBOL on an IBM 1130 in order to program it, the software for the design of carpet patterns ( 1968).

Forth

Moore Forth developed since 1968 and built his personal software library on an IBM 1130 which graphics capability on the first terminal, which he had seen connected, was (IBM 2250). In the following years he used Forth for controlling the 11m telescope and the receiver of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory ( NRAO ) at Kitt Peak for a national program for monitoring and recording of millimeter waves in space (1970).

In 1973, Moore founded with Elizabeth Rather the Forth, Inc. and headed for $ 5,000 at. In the following 10 years he ported Forth systems on many mini -, micro-and mainframe computers. He programmed so many applications of large databases to automated robotics.

In 1980 he published in the magazine byte is a special issue on " The Forth Language. " Foreword by Greg Williams is one of the rare impressions of people outside the Forth World dar. Finally, Moore Forth left, Inc. in 1982 to exclusively to from now on to dedicate hardware development.

Chips

Moore intended the performance of its programming system to increase by he realized the Forth architecture as hardware. He is a co-founder of Novix, Inc. and implemented (1983), the NC4000 processor in a gate array. To this end, he developed and also sold kits. A derivative of which was sold to Harris Semiconductor and marketed as RTX2000 specifically for space applications (1988).

As a member of the DBA Computer Cowboys, he designed (1985 ) the chip Sh- Boom from standard components, which is still marketed. For the MuP21 he developed (1990 ) his own design tool. The MuP21 has several specialized processors on a chip. Was on Moore's F21 (1993 ) integrated a network interface. He then founded the company iTv and designed the i21, with a similar architecture but with a much higher power output specifically for internet applications (1996).

Back at the computer Cowboys, he developed colorForth, its VLSI design tool ported also there and designed (2001) the microcomputer c18, a simple 18 -bit core with stack which is, on a chip Seaforth 40C18 (PDF, 268 kB) space find. With some people from the last development team founded Moore 2009, Green Arrays, Inc., where he designed a number of new multi- computer chips that are based now on the architecture of F18A (PDF, 649 kB) and thus represent an evolution of the c18. The GA144 (PDF, 2.4 MB) succeeded Moore for the first time to accommodate the F18A 144 times in a processor. Its processors are always designed for high performance and low power consumption.

Awards

• Award for contributions to software quality and Computer Design, 1983. The plaque was signed by President Ronald Reagan.

Patents

• U.S. 05070451 Forth Specific Language Microprocessor, 1991
• U.S. 05319757 Forth Specific Language Microprocessor, 1995
• U.S. 05440749 High performance, low cost microprocessor architecture, 1995
• U.S. 05530890 High performance, low cost microprocessor, 1996
• U.S. 05604915 Data processing system having bus load dependent timing, 1997
• U.S. 05659703 Microprocessor system with hierarchical stack and method of operation, 1997
• U.S. 05784584 High performance microprocessor using instructions did operate within instruction groups, 1998
• U.S. 05809336 High performance microprocessor having variable speed system clock, 1998
• EP 0870226 RISC microprocessor architecture, 1997
• WO 9715001 RISC microprocessor architecture, 1997

Recent Publications

• Renaissance Development, Embedded Systems Conference, 1992
• The Evolution of Forth; Rather, Coburn, Moore; History of Programming Languages ​​II, Addison -Wesley, 1996
• Documentary about the F21 microprocessor at Ultra Technology, Inc. by Jeff Fox.