From owner-freebsd-hackers  Fri Aug 27 18: 2:57 1999
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Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 21:05:48 -0400
From: Sergey Babkin <babkin@bellatlantic.net>
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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
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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


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