Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!lanl!lambda!lambda.lanl.gov!scp From: scp@blanche.LANL>GOV (Stephen C. Pope) Newsgroups: comp.sys.celerity Subject: Model 500 details Message-ID: GOV> Date: 16 Feb 90 16:22:14 GMT Sender: news@lambda.UUCP Reply-To: scp@acl.lanl.gov Organization: Advanced Computing Lab, LANL, NM Lines: 43 Someone wrote me: > Stephen, > Do you have a description of the 500 architecture > (instructions, timing, pipelines, etc.)? We have been unable to dig > one out of our local people, but we haven't pressed the issue yet. An > instruction set manual would have been very helpful in locking down > the compiler bug that zapped Perl, besides the inherent educational value. > As it is, I'm guessing at the mnemonics that I get out of the debugger. > If you have been able to get such a manual (which I presume > you'd need to port gcc), that might give us some leverage with the locals. I haven't had much more luck. All I have been able to get on this subject is a handwritten ``wall chart'' that is nearly illegible. It shows the opcode <-> mnemonic mappings, with the explaination of the mnemonic (like ``djibzm'' == ``delayed jump on indicator bit pairs zeros minus'', which is one of my favorite mind-benders). No explaination of the register set, pipelining, flags<->opcodes dependencies, or the assembler itself. Needless to say, it would be quite a chore to figure out what each of the instructions *really* does. I have it from pretty reliable sources that this little chart is all that existed about a year ago; I can't seem to get any info on any newer document. What I can't believe is that Celerity and FPS have managed to create this system without any better documentation internally. I think we'd all welcome more low level information such as this dort of stuff; it can only make the machine more usable and interesting to the world by helping us get real software running. On another note, I do wish to commend FPS on their fast response time; I mentioned the small-mindedness of their cpp a few days ago on the net, and magically a tape showed up yesterday with a bigger-tabled cpp! Thanks a million! stephen pope advanced computing lab, lanl scp@acl.lanl.gov ps. yes, I know that two copies of my postings seem to escape. Fixed Real Soon Now.