Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!sun!snafu!lm From: lm@snafu.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: In defense of the VAX Message-ID: <90677@sun.uucp> Date: 22 Feb 89 05:03:37 GMT References: <4592@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> <638@m3.mfci.UUCP> <11037@tekecs.TEK.COM> Sender: news@sun.uucp Reply-To: lm@sun.UUCP (Larry McVoy) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 19 In article <11037@tekecs.TEK.COM> andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com (Andrew Klossner) writes: >Paul Rodman at Multiflow (rodman@mfci.UUCP) writes: > > [Bad mouths the Vax] > >The disrespect expressed here is disturbing. Ahem. I thought we had a lesson on this topic from Eric ???, the guy who put Dennis Ritchie up the pedestal. The Vax was an OK machine for it's time. So what? It sucks now - even DEC has admitted by switching to MIPS. Listen to what Paul is saying: who here can deny that the instruction decode of the Vax was stupid? If I remember correctly, the way they are speeding up the decode is by having N decoding units, where unit N is decoding based on an N length instruction. I don't know for sure that this is correct, but a look at their instruction set makes it pretty plausible. Larry McVoy, Lachman Associates. ...!sun!lm or lm@sun.com