On Aug 23, 2021, at 8:38 PM, Tom Stepleton via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hello,
For the sake of illustration to folks who are not necessarily used to
thinking about what computers do at the machine code level, I'm interested
in collecting examples of single instructions for any CPU architecture that
are unusually prolific in one way or another.
...
Although I don't know it well, I suspect VAX will place well in one way or
another.
Indeed. Just its addressing modes, with indirection and two separate register indexing
operations, are hairy enough. Then consider the decimal arithmetic instructions that
might have up to 6 operands.
And who can ever forget the built in CRC instruction?
Amusingly it was demonstrated that many of the CISC instructions were
faster if one just did them with the 'normal' instruction set.
--
db at