[rescue] Bigger Iron at Home (was: SNMP, Baby!)

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Dave McGuire wrote:

>
> On Thursday, November 13, 2003, at 02:58 AM, Francisco Javier
> Mesa-Martinez wrote:
> >> The FAQ does talk mostly at the h/w-level only about the different RT
> >> and board models, but not the processor design specifically.
> >>
> >> Are there still any RT-PC AOS(BSD) users?
> >
> > I have some old IBM journal articles, and some IEEE stuff on the CPU.
> > Not
> > very exciting architecture, it does a bunch of weird IBM stuffs.
>
>    Ok...Five bucks to anyone who can name an architecture that Francisco
> actually *likes*...and x86 doesn't count.

I did not say I did not like it, it is just that they had a good idea with
teh 801 and they seem to do a lot of weird shit with the ROMP... which was
sort of like "uh?"

There are plenty of architectures I dig, and I am pretty sure you have
never hear me say anything about *MOST* MIPS parts (with a clear
exception).

As I tried to explain myself earlier in a previous thread, I happen to do
architecture for a living... so I am very very very picky. Just because my
perspective is a little bit different, i.e. most people take an
architecture for granted, as that is whay they have to work with. I have
to go deeper and understand why is that the designing team was doing what
they were doing.

IBM in particular has very interesting research stuff, however their
production designs are not that exciting to me. I am sure you have never
hear me say anything bad about POWER. Nor PICS :)...

And in honor of Mr. McGuire I am sure you'll be glad that in the computer
architecture class I am TAing we just had a nice midterm in which the
students had to deal with a pipelined VAX architecture. It was fun to see
the faces of students who have memorized the Hennessy and Patterson book
(a lot of foreign students seem unable to think logically on their own but
are darn good at memorizing large amounts of data, even thoug our tests
are open book open notes). Anyhow, I had a guilty pleasure at seeing their
confussion since they were expecting a MIPS like system and they
encountered a VAX :). In preparing the midterm I had to learn what a bitch
was to pipeline the VAX, so at least I got somethin out of it. I just feel
guilty that the students had to suffer due to my current reading topic :).