Strategies for machine instruction transformation in an expert system

To build an expert system which can transform machine language programs between any pair of computers, an intermediate language is proposed. A program is first converted to an equivalent program in this intermediate language, which in turn is converted to the assembly language and machine language of the destination machine. Several strategies are developed to ensure a proper and efficient transformation. The authors discuss a local transformation, a basic block transformation, and instruction side effect handling. An example of program transformation between the VAX and the IBM 370 systems is given