On Sat, May 21, 2016 at 08:59:55PM -0400, Alvin Starr wrote: > Microcode also helped with reusing gates. > For example coding a multiply instruction as a loop of adds and shifts. > now days most processors have ripple multipliers.
Sure speeds up multiplies though. > The x86 although popular is not the best example of a CISC design. > The National Semiconductor NS32000 which I believe was the first > production 32bit microprocessor. > The current x86 64bit is just the last of a long set of patches from the > 8086. I would change that to 4004. > I believe the last original CPU design from intel was the iAPX 432. Maybe. And even though it flopped they still insisted on trying such a design in the Itanium again. And again it flopped and didn't work. When will intel learn that compile time scheduling is NEVER going to happen in general purpose use? > Intel had plans to dead end the x86 in favour if the Itanium as the step > up to 64bit but AMD scuttled those plays by designing a 64 but > instruction set addition. The Itanium being an awful design probably did most of the damage. > A number of Risc processors still live on mostly in embedded applications.. > MIPS. > ARM. > Power(IBM) Well IBM in the server and HPC market, Freescale (well NXP now) in the embedded market. Well AppliedMicro does a bit of powerpc still too. > It was a shame to see the end of the Alpha it was a nice processor and > opened the door to NUMA interprocessor interconnects that just came into > the the Intel world. Unfortunately a case of horrible management and being too worried about hurting sales of your former product even though your compretitors didn't mind hurting it at all. -- Len Sorensen --- Talk Mailing List [email protected] https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
