The goal of the project is to scaffold the VM to a degree where I can compare it with the current trilog runtime.

A compiler from Prolog to the ZIP virtual machine, and the VM itself, in C. ZIP is the abstract machine from Clocksin's Design and Simulation of a Sequential Prolog Machine (1984); the papers are in doc/.

zipc is meant to become the backend of trilog if the MVP succeeds, or just stay as a faster separate Prolog compilable runtime, I am not really sure yet. Either way, trilog interprets clauses as terms with the ABC algorithm, and compiling them to ZIP should make the same programs run in fewer instructions and less memory, which should help with trilog's main target.

The compiler is written in Prolog and runs on Scryer Prolog. It writes a binary image, which the VM in src/ loads and runs.