Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mstan!amull
From: amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: unexpected CPU behavior [was 486 bugs -- it's in there!]
Message-ID: <1028@s6.Morgan.COM>
Date: 8 Jun 90 03:28:22 GMT
References: <350@necssd.NEC.COM> <19200001@hplvli.HP.COM>
Organization: Morgan Stanley & Co. NY, NY
Lines: 28

In article <19200001@hplvli.HP.COM>, boyne@hplvli.HP.COM (Art Boyne) writes:
> csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod ) writes:
> 
> >Motorola's 68000 had a kind of quirk that caused a clr command to
>                   ^^^
> Try "has" - the 68000 has never been fixed, and it *still* is a
> pain to clear I/O registers to 0 when using a compiler that likes
> to optimize "x = 0" to a CLR instruction.

This thread started out lamenting the bugs in Intel chips. As an
inveterate Intel chip owner - I've been bit by those bugs, even the
B5 i486. 

What seems interesting to me is the large number of people who 
step forward to rail against the 68000 series chips too. 

I have recently had to go through a rather long list of CPU bugs
and workarounds that came with the latest SunOS fortran compiler;
and it seems that every chip manufacturer which produced processors
for the Sun machines has a bug history. I wonder if Intel is really
much worse than other companies, a claim I would have been more
willing to accept before working through a long list of FPU chips.

It looks like chip bugs are more economic in origin to me than 
the result of ignorant engineering. Any comments?

Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt