information about Common Lisp implementation

[HEDRICK at RUTGERS (Mngr DEC-20's/Dir LCSR Comp Facility)]

We are about to sign a contract with DEC's LCG whereby they sponsor us
to produce an extended addressing Lisp.  We are still discussing whether
this should be Interlisp or Common Lisp.  I can see good arguments in
both directions, and do not have a strong perference, but I would
slightly prefer Common Lisp.  Do you know whether there are any
implementations of Common Lisp, or something reasonably close to it? I
am reconciled to producing my own "kernel", probably in assembly
language, though I have some other candidates in mind too. But I would
prefer not to have to do all of the Lisp code from scratch.

As you may know, DEC is probably going to support a Lisp for the VAX. My
guess is that we will be very likely to do the same dialect that  is
decided upon there.  The one exception would be if it looks like MIT (or
someone else) is going to do an extended implementation of Common Lisp.
If so, then we would probably do Interlisp, for completeness.

We have some experience in Lisp implementation now, since Elisp (the
extended implementation of Rutgers/UCI Lisp) is essentially finished.
(I.e. there are some extensions I want to put in, and some optimizations,
but it does allow any sane R/UCI Lisp code to run.) The interpreter now
runs faster than the original R/UCI lisp interpreter. Compiled code is
slightly slower, but we think this is due to the fact that we are not
yet compiling some things in line that should be. (Even CAR is not
always done in line!)  The compiler is Utah's portable compiler,
modified for the R/UCI Lisp dialect.  It does about what you would want
a Lisp compiler to do, except that it does not open code arithmetic
(though a later compiler has some abilities in that direction).  I
suspect that for a Common Lisp implementation we would try to use the
PDP-10 Maclisp compiler as a base, unless it is too crufty to understand
or modify.  Changing compilers to produce extended code turns out not to
be a very difficult job.
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