MIX is a hypothetical computer used in Donald Knuth's monograph, The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP). MIX's model number is 1009, which was derived by combining the model numbers and names of several contemporaneous, commercial machines deemed significant by the author. (“MIX” also represents the value 1009 in Roman numerals.)
The 1960s-era MIX has since been superseded by a new (also hypothetical) computer architecture, MMIX, to be incorporated in forthcoming editions of TAOCP. Software implementations for both the MIX and MMIX architectures have been developed by Knuth and made freely available (named “MIXware” and “MMIXware”, respectively).
Several derivatives of Knuth's MIX/MMIX emulators also exist. GNU MDK is one such software package; it is free and runs on a wide variety of platforms.
Their purpose for education is quite similar to John L. Hennessy's and David A. Patterson's DLX architecture, from Computer Organization and Design - The Hardware Software Interface.
Read more about MIX: Architecture
Famous quotes containing the word mix:
“And would you be a poet
Before you’ve been to school?
Ah, well! I hardly thought you
So absolute a fool.
First learn to be spasmodic—
A very simple rule.
For first you write a sentence,
And then you chop it small;
Then mix the bits, and sort them out
Just as they chance to fall:
The order of the phrases makes
No difference at all.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Take a decayed Christian ... and the remains of a Stoic; mix thoroughly with good manners, a bit of money and an old-fashioned education; simmer for several years in a university. Result: a scholar and a gentleman. Well, there were worse types of human being.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Much of our reading, much of our labor, seems mere waiting: it was not that we were born for. Any other could do it as well or better. So little skill enters into these works, so little do they mix with the divine life, that it really signifies little what we do, whether we turn a grindstone, or ride, or run, or make fortune, or govern the state.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)