[Info-vax] [OT] PDP-11 architecture influences, was: Re: Current VMS engineering quality

Simon Clubley clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Tue Mar 20 13:46:48 EDT 2012


On 2012-03-19, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> On 2012-03-19 13.25, David Froble wrote:
>> Regardless it's been a very long time. Maybe that's me excuse.
>>
>> Another thing that I "thought" I knew, that "C" was influenced by the
>> PDP-11 assembler language ???
>
> A popular myth, but debunked by Denis Richie himself.
> Or atleast the predecrement and postincrement pointer stuff. Even though 
> it does translate perfectly into PDP-11 assembler.
> However, there still seem to be some debate about the real vs. double 
> floating point types as related to the PDP-11 architecture.
>

At a hardware level (instead of a language level) the PDP-11 architecture
has been reported to have influenced the design of more modern MCUs,
for example, the MSP430.

I've no direct experience of the MSP430 myself however; I'm more of a AVR
and ARM person.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world



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