Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site spanky.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!mit-eddie!mit-vax!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxi!mhuxa!houxm!hocda!spanky!ka From: ka@spanky.UUCP Newsgroups: net.arch Subject: Re: uP architecture - (nf) Message-ID: <409@spanky.UUCP> Date: Sat, 2-Jul-83 17:23:23 EDT Article-I.D.: spanky.409 Posted: Sat Jul 2 17:23:23 1983 Date-Received: Sun, 3-Jul-83 04:42:19 EDT References: <189@ucbcad.UUCP> Organization: Bell Labs, Holmdel, N. J. Lines: 15 The 8008 architecture was reasonably good as far as it went. It was a very primative, for example a memory to memory move required six instructions. However, jump to subroutine was one instruction, which makes the 8008 a definite improvement over DEC's KMC. Although a large number of instructions were required to get anything done, the instruc- tion set was simple and regular. I don't think that writing a code generator for it would be very difficult. The main problem with the 8080 instruction set is that it is a superset of the 8008 instruction set. Whether INTEL was right about the importance of upward compatability I don't know. They did, however, grab a huge market share, so they must have done something right. Probably the fact that they were selling largely to electrical engineers rather than to programmers helped. Kenneth Almquist