I'm working on a successor to my virtual computer.
http://smilebasicsource.com/page?pid=1159
I'm not satisfied with the stack architecture. Although it does manage an amazing amount of versatility with very little complexity, it's unrealistic and doesn't work the way that a real CPU works.
For the next virtual computer, I would like to make the CPU a little bit more realistic. It will still only be able to address 64k words and it will still be a purely 16-bit machine, but other than that, I have no idea what it will be like. I need to also develop a compiler for the assembly language used which is a factor in deciding how the computer will operate because more complex assembly languages are more difficult to implement a compiler for. For this reason, I'm likely to use a Load/Store architecture with few addressing modes.
I would love to hear what the community wants in a second virtual computer. Please download and try programming for the first if this interests you. I am aware that my code for the first virtual computer was extremely messy and inefficient, something that I will be working on for VC2. I am also aware of the crashing problem. The code of VC2 will be much more modular and efficient and hopefully, any action performed by the virtual computer itself will not crash the program.
Debug mode is also a consideration when designing the architecture. I wouldn't want more than 116 registers as I would run out of space to put them on the screen. Input from the circle pad and c-stick is required for debugging features as the touchscreen and buttons are both reserved for use by the virtual computer.
My goal is to eventually make an "advanced virtual computer" or AVC for short with graphics, colour, file manipulation, more RAM and a multitasking OS with GUI but my programming skill isn't there yet. The architecture for this computer will likely be memory-to-memory as it will need to run as fast as possible in an interpreted environment.
