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Microarchitecture choices (implementation of the VAX)

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Published:01 August 1989Publication History
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Abstract

The VAX Architecture provides hardware implementors with an opportunity or a nightmare, depending on your point of view. Such characteristics as 304 opcodes, a large number of addressing modes, a large number of supported data types, and non-regularities in the ISA semantics all provide challenges to the microarchitect. The VAX architecture was introduced in 1977 with its first microarchitecture, the VAX 11/780, a TTL MSI implementation. Since then, there have been several distinct implementations, each reflecting (1) the technology in which it was implemented, (2) the performance/cost tradeoffs it was supposed to consider, and (3) the design methodology of its implementors. This paper is a first attempt at discussing several VAX implementations from the standpoint of the choices made in the microarchitecture as driven by the context of the device technology, the performance/cost tradeoffs, and other considerations.

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  1. 1 VAX Architecture Handbook, Digital Equipment Corporation, 1981.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

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                • Published in

                  cover image ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter
                  ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter  Volume 20, Issue 3
                  Sep. 1989
                  253 pages
                  ISSN:1050-916X
                  DOI:10.1145/75395
                  Issue’s Table of Contents
                  • cover image ACM Conferences
                    MICRO 22: Proceedings of the 22nd annual workshop on Microprogramming and microarchitecture
                    August 1989
                    253 pages
                    ISBN:0897913248
                    DOI:10.1145/75362

                  Copyright © 1989 Author

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                  Association for Computing Machinery

                  New York, NY, United States

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                  • Published: 1 August 1989

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