[Info-vax] OpenVMS.Org quick pool

[JF Mezei]

Comparing EPIC to Risc,

would an X86 based platform emulator be able to better optimise RISC
machine code (from say Alpha) compared to EPIC machine code (from say
Itanium) ?

or would Itanium machine code have and edge because  the explicit
instructions for parralel processing would allow the emulator to
translate and process the explicit chunks of code in parralel ?

Would an Alpha emulator incorporate much of the alpha smarts in it ?
(such as predictive branching and pre-translating both possible outcomes
of a branch ?)

Or do they end up being more akin to compilers, translating a big chunk
of foreign machine code into native code and branching to it, allowing
the X86 CPU to do any optimisations it can while running native code ?


Since IBM has the rights to the translator that Apple used as "Rosetta",
I wonder if it might be able to provide better support for VMS (Alpha
and/or Itanium) on its AIX/Power platform.

This could give IBM a boost by stealing the BCS customer base and giving
them better emulation and performance than what HP could.