[rescue] Re: sunpci note: TWO cards now available

[Big Endian]

>On January 30, Big Endian wrote:
>>  How much faster are the new mentec -11s than the last DEC -11s?  What
>>  could they be compared to in terms of more modern vaxen or such?
>
>   I don't have any specs...

Damn.  This would be interesting to see.

>  > >   Now, the VAX architecture is immensely more complex than the PDP11,
>>  >but I would think it'd be doable.
>>
>>  its been done before with charon-vax hasn't it?
>
>   I'm talking about a *hardware* implementation.

I've never been that much into emulation or processor design so I 
can't say from first hand knowledge how hard it is to do software vs 
hardware.

>  > How is CISC a limitation?  CISC is merely a design decision (place
>>  the burden on the compiler or the processor) isn't it?  the IEEE
>
>   You're correct of course...I certainly wouldn't be a *technical*
>limitation; perhaps I should've been more clear about that.  It'd
>likely be a marketing issue.

Marketing is a matter of GHz and THz, the cisc vs risc battle died w/ 
the ppro and the 604.

>  > floating point should be relatively trivial to add if one designs a
>>  new VAX processor.  Some of the higher end vaxen used to have vector
>>  processors added to them, these could be integrated ala the G4.  What
>>  about scaling to 64 or 128bit?
>
>   I agree.  I haven't looked at how the VAX architecture would scale
>width-wise, but I suspect it wouldn't entail too many violations of
>the original architecture.  The trick would be maintaining
>compatibility.

true.

>   But let's face it...32 bits is just fine for most, if not all, of
>today's applications.  Granted 64 or 128 bits is MORE, and MORE is
>BETTER, but how many times have YOU used integers larger than 2^32 in
>your code?  I've done a lot of scientific programming...and *I* sure
>haven't.

I think the matter is more of being able to store 64 bit pointers. 
Vaxen are well known for their ability to handle databases and such. 
If one could have *EVERYTHING*(storage, I/O, etc) memory mapped it 
would make coding HUGE data warehouses much easier I would think.

daniel
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