[sdiy] IN your mind, what is ....

[Rainer Buchty]

> Actually, Zilog's Z-80 was really the same design-team as that of the
> 8080, but doing it under their own flag, that is Zilog.

I always considered the Z80 to be the better 8080...

Add some shift registers, a little bit of memory and ROM and you get an
entire computer including tape I/O and video output :)

> There is an interesting line of stuff happening around the 8080/8085
> sucsessor [...]

That's what I meant when I said I'd like to see a parallel universe where
"Wintel" didn't succeed. There were really interesting things going on,
but they eventually got canned (or were later re-invented for CPU-internal
use) with the "everything must be compatible to 1981" paradigm.

> For instance, I have one sitting in the graphical engine of my Tek 11402
> scope. It has a 80286 for main-processor. Whoaaa! Now that's computing
> power! ;O)

Sadly enough, any modern scope is essentially a Windows box (for the GUI)
with some more or less sophisticated sampling unit (for measuring).

> ...infact will the compacts instructions-set be good since it won't
> trash cashes as much as 32/64 bit instructions or worse yeat - VLIW.

Aaah, that's what you have the trace cache :)

Not only you have the usual I/D caches with P-IV but also a trace cache
which is used to cache already recoded (i.e. x86 to VLIW) instruction
streams.

> Adding a number of other issues you really start to wonder what so great
> about IA-64 except the amount of money spent on the project. Here the
> Alpha stuff seems more logical. But those architectures I must confess I
> know too little about.

It's a shame that the Alpha was essentially killed for political reasons
after Intel took over most of the DEC team (the other part went to AMD
which led to the K7/Athlon).

> The amount of money they can spend on R&D does not necessaryilly mean
> that they will end up with a good product. It can even been argued that
> it talks against them. It boils down to management abilities and
> mentality of the staff to handle it well. The bigger R&D spendings you
> have, the less accurate can each project be and it still works out one
> way or another. It's a paradox, but there you have it, that's life.

But the more money you pump into R&D, the more "freely" research can be
conducted and the more likely a really interesting but entirely unwanted,
unexpected, and unplanned result may happen which leads to new insights.

If you restrict research to "improve this product" it kinda gets boring.

> Then some people juggle their clock to "solve" EMC problems - what a
> broken attitude... that only works for a set of designs, and if you have
> another design you must learn how to do it properly, so why not do it
> properly to start with?

Sounds an awful lot like Oliver Bartels on de.sci.electronics :)

Rainer