[Info-vax] N-VAX processors and alternative architectures, was: Re: date comparison format from a program

[Simon Clubley]

On 2019-05-21, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
> The N-VAX chip could have evolved into a system-on-a-chip and been dirt 
> cheap to produce in the millions.  That would have been plenty good for 
> many things.  Better than that x86 POS.
>
>

How would the pricing/performance/functionality have compared to
something (for example) from Motorola (PowerPC or earlier) or MIPS
or similar ? How would it have compared to Alpha ?

To be produced as cheaply as you think it could be, it would have to
be usable with a good range of operating systems, and at comparable
or better performance than the alternative architectures, in order to
be produced and used in sufficient quantity to reduce the per-unit cost.

For the non-Alpha alternatives, you would have to tackle the 4-mode
problem, but that was VMS specific and other operating systems would
not have had that problem to deal with.

IIRC, wasn't PRISM going to be a 2-mode architecture ?

Simon.

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