[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[John Reagan]

"Rob Brown" <mylastname at gmcl.com> wrote in message 
news:alpine.LFD.2.00.0911301535400.22310 at libra.gmcl.internal...

>
> VAX allowed MOVW and MOVL on unaligned data.  It wasn't until much later 
> that I learned that doing so made the program run slower.
>

On the VAX, the compilers (at least the Pascal compiler and I believe the 
Fortran compiler where I stole the code from) align targets of branches and 
routine entry points on longword (or quadword boundaries, I forget which). 
We pad with NOPs.  It made branches and CALLs *MUCH* faster.

John