Extremely CISC instructions

[Diane Bruce]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 11:38:42AM -0400, Paul Koning wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Aug 24, 2021, at 6:34 AM, Diane Bruce <db at db.net> wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 09:09:55PM -0400, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
> >> 
> >> 
> >>> On Aug 23, 2021, at 8:38 PM, Tom Stepleton via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >>> 
...
> > faster if one just did them with the 'normal' instruction set.
> 
> Not too surprising given that the instruction worked 4 bits at a time while a reasonable software implementation goes 8 bits at a time.
> 
> The more general point is one I learned on the Moto 68040.  The task was to write a fast packet forwarding module (for an FDDI -> Ethernet switch, wihch ended up being the DECswitch 900).  When I studied the instruction timings I realized the "RISC subset" of the 68040 instruction set and addressing modes runs in one or two cycles per instruction, while all the other cases take a great deal more.  So I wrote it in the RISC subset, and ended up processing 60k packets per second, in a 25 MHz processor.
> 

Not at all surpised.

That was later done formally in the ColdFire processor. They removed all the
CISCy instructions replacing them with macros and left the RISCy instruction
set.

> 	paul
> 
> 
> 

Diane
-- 
db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db