Peter Farley's points are interesting ones. My numbers tell a very different tale, and I suspect that these differences turn on when such measurements are taken.
The first appearances of new instructions, millicoded ones anyway, do often exhibit 'bad' performance; but this performance sometimes, even usually, improves rapidly. Working with millicoded instructions has taught me two important lessons: Their performance is a moving target, and early measurements of it are usually misleading. It often improves significantly in the interval that would be required to replace them with alternative sequences. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
