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Subject: Re: [TUHS] SPARC is CRAPS spelled backwards.
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On 9/24/2018 4:20 PM, Paul Winalski wrote:
> No doubt about it--x86 instruction encoding is butt-ugly and wasteful,
> due to the need for backward compatibility with what was originally an
> 8-bit architecture.  Does SPARC have the vector instructions that have
> been added to x86 over the years?
The 8086 was the first of the "x86" line, which was 16-bit, although 
it's I/O was more 8080-ish if I recall correctly. The 8088 was an 8-bit 
data bus, granted, but having done both 8080 and 8086+ assembler, you 
couldn't really tell the difference, programming-wise between the 8086 
and the 8088, 16-bit registers, and all.

Cutting costs, as always, IBM opted for the 8088, which allowed them to 
use an 8085-style I/O architecture.

Also, granted, to this day you can still use only 8-bits of a register: 
MOV AL,0x80

art k.