Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!oodis01!uplherc!esunix!sedwards
From: sedwards@esunix.UUCP (Scott Edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Intel 80960, Memory Mgmt, and Military parts
Message-ID: <824@esunix.UUCP>
Date: 4 May 88 21:44:11 GMT
References: <266@edm.UUCP>
Organization: Evans & Sutherland, Salt Lake City, Utah
Lines: 13

From article <266@edm.UUCP>, by rroot@edm.UUCP (uucp):

>  Oh god, not again!. I hope that the 80960 does a better job of task 
> switching than the 80286 did. I'm starting to SERIOUSLY doubt the utility
> of hardware assist in areas like this given the following examples:
>   1: the 8086's string manipulation instructions.. said to give it such a
> big advantage over the 68000.  If you do cycle counts, though, it turns out
> that a 68000 move/dbcc loop is faster than the intel equivalent.

It is not the instruction that is slow, it's the way it is implimented
in the 8086, if you check the string instructions in the '286 they are
very fast, much faster than a move/dbcc loop.

-- Scott