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From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.arch,net.micro.att
Subject: Re: AT&T MIPS claim
Message-ID: <4138@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 14-Jun-86 01:20:57 EDT
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Posted: Sat Jun 14 01:20:57 1986
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> It was designed to handle multitasking multiprocess environments well.
> It has a one instruction "switch task", which I believe the 68000 lacks.

The 68000 does, indeed, not have a single "switch task" instruction, but who
cares?  The fact that operation X is performed by a single instruction in no
way implies that operation X is exceptionally fast.  Furthermore, I have no
idea how much of the task-switch time on VMS or UNIX is spent doing what the
"load process context" instruction does; it has to figure out which task to
run, for instance, which adds a few more instructions.

> The 780 has virtual memory, does the Unix PC?

Yes.
-- 
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com (or guy@sun.arpa)