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From: ohbuchi@unc.cs.unc.edu (Ryutarou Ohbuchi)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Japanese 32-bit micro can be a 68020 or 80386
Message-ID: <2735@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 17 May 88 23:02:22 GMT
References: <2006@sugar.UUCP>
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
Reply-To: ohbuchi@unc.UUCP (Ryutarou Ohbuchi)
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 43

Hmmmm. karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) writes;

>There is an article in this week's "PC Week" magazine about a 32-bit micro
>developed in Japan by a joint venture of a couple of major players there
>(sorry, I don't have the article at hand) that has a writable control store 
>and thus can have different microprograms loaded into it to emulate the 80386,
>68020 and others, apparently as a means of getting around microcode copyright 
>issues that have prevented Japanese manafacturers from cloning those processors.
>It's called VM, for Virtual Microprocessor.

<Various stuffs, such as possibility of microprogrammable processor for 
researchers, hackers, or necessity to counter by Intel/Motorola, etc. 
deleted>

Well.... I think it sounds interesting, in the sense that who in the 
Japanese industry got screwed up their mind.   Of course many of them
shows strange behaivior, strange enough to design and implement
'Ultimate General purpose register absed CISC'ish architecture 
-- TRON -- as Japanese (de facto) industry standard uP.  But 
dynamically microprogrammable processor, as a joint venture ?  To
counter 80x86/680x0 ?  Hummm... :-&

Or it may be the PC Week writer who's made a mistake;  The writer
may have misinterpreted the news release on TRON microprocessor(s)
(there are several versions from several companies/joint ventures).
(Or something else.)

I wish to know the true story.

Even if it is true, I strongly doubt the utility of such a processor as a 
joint venture (which must aiming at some standard hardware basis), and
as a research vehecle (toy) for Japanese and Americal researcher/hackers.

I'm Japanese, who is out of country for almost two years.  So my 
intuition about the sanity of Japanese industry may be totally outdated...

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Any opinion expressed here is my own.
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Ryutarou Ohbuchi	"Life's rock."   "Climb now, work later."
ohbuchi@cs.unc.edu	<on csnet>
Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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