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The 1960s-era MIX has since been superseded by a new (also hypothetical) computer architecture, MMIX, to be incorporated in forthcoming editions of TAOCP.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:
“The senses interfere everywhere, and mix their own structure with all they report of.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“Intimately concerned as we are with the system of Europe, it does not follow that we are therefore called upon to mix ourselves on every occasion, with a restless and meddling activity, in the concerns of the nations which surround us.”
—George Canning (1770–1827)