Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!pipe!peng
From: peng@pipe.cs.wisc.edu (Chih-Jui Peng)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Question about Symbolic's Ivory chip
Message-ID: <5924@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 6 Jul 88 21:15:51 GMT
Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Reply-To: peng@pipe.cs.wisc.edu (Chih-Jui Peng)
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Organization: U of Wisconson - Madison
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I recently read an article on Computer Design about the Symbolic's Ivory chip.
It says there is a 32-word scratchpad on the chip "that contains a duplicate 
of the top word on the stack in a fixed location".  Can somebody tell me what
exactly this means?  In particular, there is also a 128-word top-of-stack cache 
on chip, I am really curious why the top-of-stack is organized in this way and 
what is the difference between these two mechanisms?

Thanks and hope this is the right place to ask this question.

Chih-Jui Peng
peng@pipe.cs.wisc.edu