[Info-vax] Some questions on software for VMS 7.3 VAX

[Scott Dorsey]

Jan-Erik Soderholm  <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
>Den 2016-01-01 kl. 16:47, skrev David Froble:
>> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>> Den 2016-01-01 kl. 15:38, skrev Hans Vlems:
>>>
>>>> Weren't the last VAX systems sold in 2002?
>>>
>>> They were still "systems from the 80s" no matter
>>> when they was sold...
>>>
>>
>> Well, with that type of unreasonable logic, then all the Intel systems are
>> systems from the 70s.
>
>Didn't know that Itanium was that old.

The x86 machines are still systems from the 70s in many ways, and they are
burdened with an instruction set that is not only dated but layered like an
onion as each additional upgrade was forced to maintain instruction level
compatibility.  It is _amazing_ how well Intel has made them perform given
how much cruft they are dragging along.

The Itanium is not a system from the 70s in any way, but a system from the
80s effectively based on Ellis' _Multiflow_ architecture.  It was a very
interesting experiment but by the time there was a full analysis of the
architecture and the real flaws in the concept were found, the systems were
nearly in silicon, the software was ready and by then there was nothing
to be done other than to try and hide the problems with more cache and hope
for the best.
--scott


-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."