[Info-vax] i4 Possible?

[John Reagan]

On Friday, February 7, 2014 11:33:23 PM UTC-5, David Froble wrote:

> If that is indeed the case, then Poulson would be a superset of the 
> prior CPUs.  One could then figure that VMS would continue to use what 
> it expects, and ignore the new features.  Unless Intel "broke" something.
> 

>From the instruction-set point of view, yes, upward compatible.  However, there are chip-specific registers (each chip has them and often they change from chip to chip) for error collection, error insertion (there are interfaces to MAKE the chip get an error so you can test your error-handling code), etc.  My understanding is many of these are different for Poulson.  And it more than just a chip, but the accompanying system-level firmware, UEFI, etc.