[Info-vax] Vaxes shutting off this week

[Richard B. Gilbert]

JF Mezei wrote:
> Glen Herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> 
>> With VAX and address mode bytes it is horribly complicated
>> to decode instruction boundaries.  VAX works well for a
>> microprogrammed serial instruction processor, reading bytes
>> and operating on them.
> 
> 
> The could have decided to do what they did to the 8086. Have a front end
> decoder that generates RISC instructions from the complex CISC instructions.
> 
> Or, they could have focused on making the simple instructions very fast
> and the remainder addressijg modes less optimised and then ask compiler
> writers t generate code that uses the fast instructions.
> 
> If Intel was able to make the 8086 toy controller into a very
> respectable chip, then Shirley Digital could have done the same with VAX.
> 
> Unfortunatly, at the time the decision was made to dump VAX in favour of
> Alpha, they did not have the advantage of hindsight and
> didn'T know that Intel would succeed in getting the 8086 to break so
> many barriers.
> 
> And lets not forget that at the time, there was Sun breathing down
> Digital's neck with its own risc chips with Sun/Apolllo systes getting
> better price performance than VAX. (that was a marketing issue with
> prices for DEC gear still priced too high)
> 
> Had DEC lowered prices of VAX sufficiently, it could have competed
> against Sun, especially since VMS clustering did allow distributed
> ocmputing amongst many nodes.

Really?  I suspect that if anyone at DEC had seriously suggested 
lowering prices, he would have become a former employee within minutes 
or, at most, hours!  If DEC had been both willing and able to compete on 
price, there would probably still be a Digital Equipment Corporation! 
They couldn't, or wouldn't, so Sun and Silicon Graphics rolled right 
over them!

Some people can learn to cross the road ONLY by being run over by a truck!