Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1a 12/4/83; site rlgvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!hocda!houxm!houxz!vax135!floyd!cmcl2!seismo!rlgvax!guy From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: net.micro,net.arch,net.followup Subject: Re: What's in a 3b2? Message-ID: <2006@rlgvax.UUCP> Date: Sat, 9-Jun-84 04:53:39 EDT Article-I.D.: rlgvax.2006 Posted: Sat Jun 9 04:53:39 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 10-Jun-84 01:07:42 EDT References: <2680@ecsvax.UUCP> Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA Lines: 25 Read the article "The Operating System and Language Support Features of the BELLMAC-32", in the Proceedings of the Symposium on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, published as ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 10, Number 2, March 1982 and ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 4, April 1982. It doesn't contain an opcode map and description, but it does give a number of details - it's got a sort of post-PDP-11 architecture (general registers, instructions consisting of opcode+operands, the latter being specified by "addressing modes", etc.). 10 general purpose registers, and the PC, SP, FP, and AP in the VAX-11 fashion. So read the article to the AT&T person - it'll be fun if it makes their head explode... (Admittedly, HP is even more closed-mouthed about their Focus chip, so AT&T isn't the only offender here.) One little tidbit - I've seen the disassembler code for the 3B20, and it's one of the biggest I've ever seen. I get the impression from it that it's a lot of complexity in the instruction set to no great benefit - it's slightly less space-efficient than VAX-11 code (the VAX-11 disassembler consists of about two pages of code and a gigantic table) and the 3B20 performs at about the same level as an 11/780. I don't know how similar the 3B20 and the WE32000 are; I've heard that they are and I've heard that they really aren't. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy