True, but in those days, core was about $1 a byte (I think, I can't find
anything to back that), renting plug compatible LCS was $6000/megabyte/month
(found an old ad), so the compactness of the instructions also was a big plus.
Could have done without those instructions by putting the ED, EDMK, TR, TRT
"subroutines" into the OS to save memory, but would have taken a speed hit on
the call.
On Thursday, June 4, 2020, 5:55:33 AM EDT, <[email protected]> wrote:
> Most of the S/360 instructions were unnecessary;
> all the SS character instructions, decimal, edit, translate
> etc are redundant.
> With the basic instruction set, all of these functions can be
> provided.
Nevertheless, life is a lot easier with them. And instructions
that do more than a just a basic operation (especially including
TR, TRT, ED, EDMK) not only simplify programming, they run faster.
> ED and EDMK sparked intense (and occasionally civil) discussion
> between CPU engineers, the architecture group, and the languages
> groups. The result of such discussions is probably why we decided not
> to enhance these ops with ASCII or UNICODE versions.
