From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: peter@rulingia.com (Peter Jeremy) Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 17:45:29 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Need a new PDP-11 or VAX? In-Reply-To: <20130427224146.GR664@bitmover.com> References: <20130427224146.GR664@bitmover.com> Message-ID: <20130428074529.GG23673@server.rulingia.com> On 2013-Apr-27 15:41:46 -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: >What I'd like is a new 64 bit PDP-11. That might be fun to program in assembler but I suspect the performance would suck. The ISA complexity implies a microcoded implementation (with all the associated overheads). And compilers generally have difficulty taking advantage of complex ISAs. > That assembler was wonderful to >read and write, only a short distance from C. Agreed. > x86 makes me puke. Likewise. Warts upon warts... It's an abomination. > MIPS >and Alpha aren't much better (I was hoping for better from Alpha but they >seemed like they copied MIPS). I disagree on the Alpha. Apart from the idiotic decision to combine imprecise exceptions with needing software support for IEEE FP, I thought it was a very clean and well designed architecture. It wasn't fun to program in directly but it was intended for use with compiled languages. The designers went to a fair amount of effort to avoid embedding bottlenecks in the language. For anyone who's into really CISC architectures, check out the iAPX432. -- Peter Jeremy -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 196 bytes Desc: not available URL: