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* [TUHS] Encoding an ISA: Random Logic vs. Control Stores
@ 2021-11-30  8:07 pbirkel
  2021-11-30 15:19 ` Ron Natalie
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread
From: pbirkel @ 2021-11-30  8:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 'TUHS main list'; +Cc: 'Eugene Miya'

I believe that the PDP-11 ISA was defined at a time when DEC was still using
random logic rather than a control store (which came pretty soon
thereafter).  Given a random logic design it's efficient to organize the ISA
encoding to maximize its regularity.  Probably also of some benefit to
compilers in a memory-constrained environment?

I'm not sure at what point in time we can say "lots of processors" had moved
to a control store based implementation.  Certainly the IBM System/360 was
there in the mid-60's.  HP was there by the late 60's.

-----Original Message-----
From: TUHS <tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org> On Behalf Of Larry McVoy
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2021 10:18 PM
To: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>; Eugene Miya <eugene@soe.ucsc.edu>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] A New History of Modern Computing - my thoughts

On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 05:12:44PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> I remember Ken Witte (my TA for the PDP-11 class) trying to get me to 
> see how easy it was to read the octal.  If I remember correctly (and I 
> probably don't, this was ~40 years ago), the instructions were divided 
> into fields, so instruction, operand, operand and it was all regular, 
> so you could see that this was some form of an add or whatever, it got 
> the values from these registers and put it in that register.

I've looked it up and it is pretty much as Ken described.  The weird thing
is that there is no need to do it like the PDP-11 did it, you could use
random numbers for each instruction and lots of processors did pretty much
that.  The PDP-11 didn't, it was very uniform to the point that Ken's
ability to read octal made perfect sense.  I was never that good but a
little google and reading and I can see how he got there.

...

--lm


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Encoding an ISA: Random Logic vs. Control Stores
@ 2021-12-01 13:59 Paul Ruizendaal
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Paul Ruizendaal @ 2021-12-01 13:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

For DEC memo’s on designing the PDP-11 see bitsavers:

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/memos/

(thank you Bitsavers! I love that archive)

Ad van de Goor (author of a few of the memo’s) was my MSc thesis professor. I recall him saying in the early 80’s that in his view the PDP-11 should have been an 18-bit machine; he reasoned that even in the late 60’s it was obvious that 16-bits of address space was not enough for the lifespan of the design.

---

For those who want to experiment with FPGA’s and ancient ISA’s, here is my plain Verilog code for the TI 9995 chip, which has an instruction set that is highly reminiscent of the PDP-11:
https://gitlab.com/pnru/cortex/-/tree/master

The actual CPU code (TMS99095.v) is less than 1000 lines of code.

Paul


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Encoding an ISA: Random Logic vs. Control Stores
@ 2021-12-01 14:55 Douglas McIlroy
  2021-12-01 20:27 ` Jon Steinhart
  2021-12-01 21:14 ` Lawrence Stewart
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Douglas McIlroy @ 2021-12-01 14:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

My take on defining random logic

random logic : hardware :: spaghetti code : software

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2021-12-01 22:11 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2021-11-30  8:07 [TUHS] Encoding an ISA: Random Logic vs. Control Stores pbirkel
2021-11-30 15:19 ` Ron Natalie
2021-11-30 15:30   ` arnold
2021-11-30 15:39     ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-11-30 18:50     ` Jon Steinhart
2021-11-30 21:45       ` Humm
2021-11-30 23:07         ` Jon Steinhart
2021-11-30 23:18           ` Henry Bent
2021-12-01  5:00             ` Jon Steinhart
2021-12-01  6:27               ` pbirkel
2021-12-01 16:42                 ` ron minnich
2021-12-01 17:08                   ` Ron Natalie
2021-12-01 21:56                   ` [TUHS] Encoding an ISA Warren Toomey
2021-12-01 13:59 [TUHS] Encoding an ISA: Random Logic vs. Control Stores Paul Ruizendaal
2021-12-01 14:55 Douglas McIlroy
2021-12-01 20:27 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-12-01 21:14 ` Lawrence Stewart
2021-12-01 22:09   ` Jon Steinhart

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