Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!lll-lcc!pyramid!voder!apple!bcase From: bcase@apple.UUCP (Brian Case) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.arch Subject: Re: Was the 360 badly-designed? (was Re: Compatibility with EBCDIC) Message-ID: <1589@apple.UUCP> Date: Sun, 23-Aug-87 18:29:19 EDT Article-I.D.: apple.1589 Posted: Sun Aug 23 18:29:19 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 01:22:00 EDT References: <855@tjalk.cs.vu.nl> <2683@hoptoad.uucp> Reply-To: bcase@apple.UUCP (Brian Case) Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, USA Lines: 16 Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:3862 comp.arch:1891 In article <1035@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >In article <1580@sol.ARPA> crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl) writes: >>. . .one needs VERY good arguments to claim that the 360 >>architecture was badly-designed. > >No stack, small segments, nonstandard character set with holes. Wait, is the character set part of the architecture!?!? I didn't think so, but.... Also, some of the best architectures, in my opinion, don't "have" any stacks either (what does it mean to "have" a stack?). The 4K byte addressability problem is real. The real problems with the architecture are related to system software interface issues and implementation ramifications of the instruction set definition, e.g. things like too few registers, two-address operations, hard-to-pipeline addressing modes, etc. bcase