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From: kds@mipos2.intel.com (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Japanese 32-bit micro can be a 68020 or 80386
Message-ID: <2248@mipos3.intel.com>
Date: 18 May 88 20:08:42 GMT
References: <2006@sugar.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@mipos3.intel.com
Reply-To: kds@mipos2.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~)
Organization: Microprocessor Component Group, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 16

I believe the microarchitectures of the 68k and the 80*86 are significantly
different for some very good reasons (like, the nature of the instruction sets
are different).  But beyond this, an obvious way of doing much the same thing
is just to have an interpreter of the appropriate instruction set as a
macro program running on a risc, since that is essentially what you would be
doing by trying to have a microcode program simulating some other instruction
set on yet another general purpose machine.  But unless the new machine
risc or microcodable one) were significantly faster then both
target machines, it couldn't be faster than the custom hardware implementation
of the specific machine.

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You don't have to break many eggs to hate omlets -- Ian Shoales

Ken Shoemaker, Microprocessor Design, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, California
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