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From: hopkins@burdvax.UUCP (Bill Hopkins)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Stack Caching
Message-ID: <1560@burdvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Mar-84 11:09:56 EST
Article-I.D.: burdvax.1560
Posted: Mon Mar 26 11:09:56 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Mar-84 02:09:46 EST
Organization: System Development Corporation, Paoli PA
Lines: 18

A comment or two on Mike O'Dell's paean to Burroughs:

The B5500 and successors (up through the B6800/7800, anyway), did not have a
true cache of the top-of-stack registers, but kept the top two stack
elements in registers which in some cases could be diddled with without
using a stack reference.  The differences were slight but architecturally
significant.  E-mode (the Burroughs term for a standardized architecture
based on the large systems, i.e.,B5000, B6000, and B7000 series) cleaned it
up, removing the registers from the visible architecture.

Organick's book does an excellent job on the run-time information structure
that the large systems assume and maintain. (The support is an interesting
mix of hardware and software.)  It says almost nothing about the instruction
set and how it manipulates the structure;  then again, it fits in one
volume...

		Bill Hopkins