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From: aglew@ccvaxa.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: IBM 801
Message-ID: <5100001@ccvaxa>
Date: Fri, 24-Jan-86 21:38:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ccvaxa.5100001
Posted: Fri Jan 24 21:38:00 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Jan-86 03:56:29 EST
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Nf-ID: #R:sdcsvax.UUCP:1328:ccvaxa:5100001:000:800
Nf-From: ccvaxa.UUCP!aglew    Jan 24 20:38:00 1986


Why did IBM not release news about the 801 until just about now?

Paranoid answer: because the 801 RISC approach was valid when VLSI
was young (just how long has Patterson's RISC group been going on)
but is no longer applicable because of increasing density (perhaps
the argument that microcoded control takes up too much space is
no longer valid if you can cram as much parallel execution hardware
as you can afford, to 1 cycle most simple instructions, plus as
much microcode as you need to sequence complex ones. Microcode
was a lump that lay across the chip boundary - RISC placed this lump
outside because it couldn't all be fitted inside - maybe IBM can now
squeeze it all onto the chip?)

Just paranoid - but replace IBM with Fujitsu or Hitachi or NEC
and start sweating...

Andy "Krazy" Glew