Nat Semi ns32k, was Re: Whitechapel Computer Works MG-1

Eric Smith spacewar at gmail.com
Mon Dec 1 23:13:08 CST 2014


On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 8:03 PM, Jon Elson <elson at pico-systems.com> wrote
[about NS32K]:
> It was certainly a CISC design, and probably not as clean as the VAX
> architecture
> (although the number of addressing options on the VAX may have gone off the
> deep end also).

You haven't seen "off the deep end" CISC until you look at the Intel iAPX 432,
which makes the VAX architecture look lean and mean.

For that matter, VAX was far simpler than x86 and x86_64 have become.

And I wouldn't argue that it's CISC, but even the ARMv8 architecture manual is
over 2000 pages.


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