Abstract

This thesis presents the Brisk Machine [54], a machine for executing functional languages, designed to be simple and flexible to support a number of run-time execution models for the Brisk compiler. Design considerations have been made to support dynamic loading, deterministic concurrency [23,51], distribution, debugging tools and logic programming [76]. To achieve this, the compiler's intermediate language, the Brisk Kernel Language BKL is simpler than the STG language [100], as evaluation, extension and optimisation issues are relegated to special built-in functions. Moreover, function calls are saturated, as any function has an known arity and in every call to it, is applied to the rightnumber of arguments, which makes the machine dynamic and supports dynamic loading. To incorporate

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