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From: seymour@milton.acs.washington.edu (Richard Seymour)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: "RISCy VAX" ??
Message-ID: <4146@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 15 Jun 90 00:28:25 GMT
References: <1990Jun11.172604.22994@hayes.fai.alaska.edu> <26139@cc.usu.edu>
Reply-To: seymour@milton.u.washington.edu (Richard Seymour)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 14

another thing the DEC people are (justifiably) proud of
is that the 9000 takes fewer internal cycles to execute most instructions.
my vague memory of the engineer's talk was:
 the 780 took an average of 11 cycles to execute instructions
 the 9000 takes about 6 to 8 -- and they're much faster cycles.

The RISCness was from breaking the data and instruction flow down,
and (i believe) using faster ALUs, etc. multiple times, rather
than a broad-complex path to perform the steps of execution.
Sorta like the 1962 SDS 930 family (the "first" Silicon-based computer
priced below $100,000.  Done by using the same ALU for address and data
calculations -- "Silicon cost three times as much as Germanium, so they
used each part three times to reduce the part count by a factor of three".)
--dick