Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!uhccux!virtue!comp.vuw.ac.nz!munnari.oz.au!goanna!ok
From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Computer Architecture methodology
Keywords: A Series, B6700
Message-ID: <3329@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 28 Jun 90 05:24:43 GMT
References: <8533@canterbury.ac.nz> <14279@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Distribution: comp.arch
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 20

In article <14279@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>, barry@PRC.Unisys.COM (Barry Traylor) writes:
: The B6700 and its successors have all been designed as integrated
: hardware/software systems.  ... The architecture of the machine is
: largely driven by a combination of requirements from Cobol, Algol and
: Fortran.

: In recent history, we have been working on ways to make commonly used
: instructions run faster, and there have been some attempts to bend the
: software to work with some ill concieved hardware instructions, now
: obsolescent.

I would love to hear about which of the hardware instructions are now
regarded as obsolescent and ill conceived.  Are LLLU and SRCH on the way
out?  What finally happened about the 20-bit physical addresses?  What
problems does Ada have with the A series?  What's the true story on the
addition of {HEX|BCD|ASCII|EBCDIC} POINTERs and the later removal of
BCD POINTER?  Has vectormode been extended?  

-- 
"private morality" is an oxymoron, like "peaceful war".