Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation, 18(3/4)

Abstract: We present a compact implementation of Scheme for microcontrollers that includes a real-time garbage collector. The compiler runs on a normal workstation and produces byte-code from the source program. A smart linker links the byte-code with the runtime module. We demonstrate that with this system it is clearly possible to run realistic Scheme programs on a microcontroller with as little as 3 to 4 KB of RAM. Programs that access the whole Scheme library require only 13 KB of ROM. As a byproduct of this research, we designed a novel space-efficient real-time GC algorithm.