Re: New Vax - future directions :-)

[john%ziaspace.com@localhost]

> Right… it’s a pure load/store architecture with exactly one 
> addressing mode.  The hypothetical VAX-64 that’s being discussed here 
> is really just “make VAX bigger and address some annoyances”.

(apologies that Pine is mangling NeXT Mail's quotes and apostrophes)

Curious - what would the commercial implication be if, say, a new VAX 
architecture were to take shape in the FPGA world? Does anyone have 
"rights" to the ISA?

One of the obvious benefits to CISC is that you can have instructions for 
literally anything, and they can take tons of clocks, but each new 
generation can do more and more in hardware until super complex operations 
are done in single clocks, which is what happened with x86.

I think VAX as an open FPGA core would be an excellent learning tool for 
existing VAX code, for people learning processor design, and for future 
general purpose VAX-64 use.

How long will it be before Jason as a vax64 tree in NetBSD? ;)

John