The Computer at the Bottom of a Canal
6 hours ago
- #technology-cycles
- #hardware-history
- #computer-architecture
- The Rekursiv was a custom processor developed in 1988 by Scottish hi-fi company Linn Products, designed to support object-oriented programming with hardware memory safety, garbage collection, and persistent storage.
- Its key innovations included hardware-enforced memory bounds and type checking, a single-level persistent store merging memory and disk, and a garbage collector in silicon, all aimed at running the LINGO language efficiently.
- Despite its advanced ideas, the Rekursiv failed commercially due to the rapid rise of RISC and commodity microprocessors, which outperformed it and made bespoke architectures obsolete at the time.
- Modern technology has validated its concepts: CHERI architecture provides hardware memory safety, Azul Systems implemented hardware-assisted garbage collection, single-level stores persist in IBM i, and domain-specific architectures like Google's TPU are now mainstream.
- The story illustrates the cyclical nature of technology, where ideas ahead of their time can resurface when economic and technical conditions change, as seen with RISC-V and renewed government funding for innovative silicon.