7 Aug
2006
7 Aug
'06
3:31 p.m.
On the positive side, what is the most perfect
computer architecture +
implementation people have come across here?
Tell us why, especially if it's something like PERQ or Acorn RISC/pc
that is not common outside of a limited geographic area.
Mosyt beuatiful piece of electronics (related to computation :-)) that
it's been my pleasure to work on has to be the HP9100. It's an amazingly
elegant design. On the other hand it's a lousy computer architecture,
there's not even a full adder. Just increment and decrment on the main
registers.
But my 'prize' for the nicrst architecture of all time is the classic
PERQ, particualarly the 16K CPU version. It's very clean at the microcode
level, you have 256 (!) gerenal purpose registers, with an index register
to address them if you want it. You don't get hardware multiply and
divide, but you do get MULSTEP and DIVSTEP -- hardware to do 1 bit of
said operations. Just stick it in a microcode loop. And of course yuo can
modify the microcode as much as you like.
-tony