Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 21:05:48 -0400 From: Sergey Babkin <babkin@bellatlantic.net> To: "Zuidam, Hans" <Hans.Zuidam@nl.origin-it.com> Cc: "'Thomas David Rivers'" <rivers@dignus.com>, jlwest@tseinc.com, szoli@netvisor.hu, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Intel Merced FreeBSD??? Intel? - NOT Message-ID: <37C735EC.A32AD59A@bellatlantic.net> References: <9B7E8CE3E214D311A3050008C7A4BDDB0665DC@nlehx061.ehvvon.nl.origin-it.com>
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Zuidam, Hans wrote: > > Hi, > > The IA64 (merced) is a kind of VLIW (Very Large Instruction Word) > processor. It is basically a complete new kind of systems architecture > with a i686 (and of course a i586, ..., 4004) slapped on the side. The > original processor design was done by HP. See: > > The IA-64 Architecture at Work, > IEEE Computer Vol. 31, No. 7, July 1998 > > for a more informed description ;-) of the processor. Merced is not VLIW. VLIW means explicit parallelism of instructions, scheduled by the compiler. It also means that the code is tied very closely to the internal CPU architecture and would be incompatible between different CPUs of the same family. I can't remember now how the Merced architecture is named but it's a rudimentary data-flow machine with explicit synchronization points. Intel has an introduction to the Merced architecture on their Web-site. Also there was a talk at the SCO Forum about the Merced assembly language, I guess it should also be available online. -SB To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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