On Thu, 09 Jul 2015 14:53:21 -0600 Richard <[email protected]> wrote:
> > In article <[email protected]>, > Johnny Billquist <[email protected]> writes: > > > On 2015-07-09 20:26, Eric Smith wrote: > > > Would anyone mind posting a short assembly snippet of a VAX vector > > > instruction used in context? > > > > > > The only complex instruction I've ever used is the Z-80's "LDIR". > > > > Even plain old VAX instructions can be way more complex than LDIR. :-) > > There are instructions for polynomial expansion, case instructions, > > move translated strings, and I can't even remember what else... > > VAX was pretty much the last CISC-y architecture that sold in any > sizable units, AFAIK. IBM z/Architecture is still a multibillion dollar a year seller. It's certainly the oldest CISC architecture still in production and active development. As far as sizeable units go, you may be right. IBM has been careful not to release numbers but we can often guesstimate from product license counts and the IBM financials. I think you could argue at the beginning System/360 did have things in common with what would later be called RISC although z/Architecture has overshadowed a lot of that RISC flavor in favor of more specialized instructions and addressing modes. There are manuals for the Vector Facility for System/370 on bitsavers in case anybody is interested in how Big Blue did it. The earliest one I saw was from 1986. Although I worked on several machines that had the vector facility I did not use it since I was mostly not working with numerical applications. -- Please DO NOT COPY ME on mailing list replies. I read the mailing list. RSA 4096 fingerprint 7940 3F02 16D3 AFEE F2F8 ACAA 557C 4B36 98E4 4D49 _______________________________________________ Simh mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
