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Re: cheap analog square function?

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Am 13.02.26 um 01:09 schrieb john larkin:
> On Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:38:43 +0100, Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de>
> wrote:
> 
>> Am 12.02.26 um 23:12 schrieb john larkin:
>>> On Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:05:53 +0100, Lasse Langwadt <llc@fonz.dk>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2/12/26 19:19, john larkin wrote:
>>>>> The internal stack-oriented architecture of Focal-8 inspired the cool
>>>>> PDP-11 architecture which in turn inspired the 68K.
>>>>
>>>> how did stack-oriented inspire architectures with lots of orthogonal
>>>> registers, by showing how it should not be done?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Stack-oriented inspired stack-oriented. In the PDP-11, any of the
>>> registers could be used as a stack pointer.
>>
>> That does not make it stack-oriented. It had registers and nice
>> addressing modes with pre-decrement and post increment etc.
>> Nice for string handling, too.
> 
> I called it stack oriented!
> 
> A couple of people made real stack machines, hyper-CISC things with
> advanced instructions. HP and Intel as I recall. They were pig slow
> and didn't last.

That was the iAPX432. HP's brainchild, Intel prepared the
mass production, which never really happened. We had a
Multibus board with one 432 in our processor zoo at the Tech Univ
Berlin, but nobody adopted it to the point that it did useful
work. The entry cost was just too high. With today's cache
technology it might make more sense.
It had nothing to do with stack machines.

Western Digital had a stack machine for UCSD Pascal; that
was essentially the chip set of the LSI 11/23 with custom
microprograms.

Our above-mentioned PDP11/40e was also microprogrammable
(therefore the e suffix). There were only 5 of it's kind
in the world; we had 2 of them in the same unibus.
Someone at the institute wrote a microprogrammed
stack machine for Per Brinch Hansen's Pascal compiler that
ran like a scalded dog.

Luckily for Intel, they did not drop the X86. Internally,
a Pentiyummy has nothing in common with x86. There are 100s
of registers (called renaming registers) that can hold
multiple incarnations of eax, ebx and so on, so that multiple
sequential instructions can be executed at the same time, with
hardware that checks for dependencies over time.

When the 200 MHz Pentium appeared, that was the EOL for
most Riscs, including Mips, Fairchild Clipper, DEC Alpha,
IBM Power PC, 32032 and and and.

> On the PDP-11 there was a short program to fill every location in
> memory with zero, the halt opcode.
> 
> And another program would fill all of memory with the NOP opcode, and
> it would cycle on that forever.

That filled some badly needed voids.

Gerhard

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cheap analog square function? Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com> - 2026-02-09 14:52 -0900
  Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-09 16:47 -0800
  Re: cheap analog square function? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2026-02-09 17:50 -0700
  Re: cheap analog square function? "Edward Rawde" <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2026-02-09 20:03 -0500
  Re: cheap analog square function? Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> - 2026-02-10 02:05 +0000
  Re: cheap analog square function? Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> - 2026-02-10 05:50 +0000
    Re: cheap analog square function? bitrex <user@example.net> - 2026-02-10 03:39 -0500
  Re: cheap analog square function? Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> - 2026-02-10 18:05 +1100
    Re: cheap analog square function? John R Walliker <jrwalliker@gmail.com> - 2026-02-10 08:41 +0000
      Re: cheap analog square function? bitrex <user@example.net> - 2026-02-10 03:46 -0500
        Re: cheap analog square function? bitrex <user@example.net> - 2026-02-10 03:49 -0500
  Re: cheap analog square function? antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2026-02-10 14:12 +0000
    Re: cheap analog square function? Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com> - 2026-02-10 07:49 -0900
      Re: cheap analog square function? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2026-02-10 11:40 -0700
      Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-10 11:39 -0800
        Re: cheap analog square function? Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> - 2026-02-11 23:38 +1100
          Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-11 07:56 -0800
            Re: cheap analog square function? Buzz McCool <buzz_mccool@yahoo.com> - 2026-02-11 09:30 -0800
              Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-11 09:38 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid (Liz Tuddenham) - 2026-02-11 18:52 +0000
                Re: cheap analog square function? bitrex <user@example.net> - 2026-02-11 14:22 -0500
                Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-11 12:14 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? bitrex <user@example.net> - 2026-02-11 15:35 -0500
                Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-11 13:04 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? bitrex <user@example.net> - 2026-02-11 16:35 -0500
                Re: cheap analog square function? Lasse Langwadt <llc@fonz.dk> - 2026-02-11 21:41 +0100
                Re: cheap analog square function? Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> - 2026-02-11 22:49 +0100
            Re: cheap analog square function? Lasse Langwadt <llc@fonz.dk> - 2026-02-11 21:37 +0100
            Re: cheap analog square function? Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> - 2026-02-12 17:36 +1100
              Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-12 10:19 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? Lasse Langwadt <llc@fonz.dk> - 2026-02-12 21:05 +0100
                Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-12 14:12 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? Lasse Langwadt <llc@fonz.dk> - 2026-02-12 23:39 +0100
                Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-12 15:19 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2026-02-12 18:13 -0700
                Re: cheap analog square function? Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de> - 2026-02-13 00:38 +0100
                Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-12 16:09 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de> - 2026-02-13 02:42 +0100
                Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-13 09:30 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> - 2026-02-14 06:14 +0000
                Re: cheap analog square function? Glen Walpert <nospam@null.void> - 2026-02-14 14:18 +0000
                Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-14 07:51 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> - 2026-02-15 06:27 +0000
                Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-14 07:47 -0800
                Re: cheap analog square function? Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> - 2026-02-15 06:50 +0000
                Re: cheap analog square function? mas@example.com - 2026-02-16 07:38 +0000
                Re: cheap analog square function? Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> - 2026-02-16 08:49 +0000
              Re: cheap analog square function? legg <legg@nospam.magma.ca> - 2026-02-14 08:57 -0500
  Re: cheap analog square function? piglet <erichpwagner@hotmail.com> - 2026-02-12 21:37 +0000
    Re: cheap analog square function? Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com> - 2026-02-13 06:40 -0900
      Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-13 08:34 -0800
        Re: cheap analog square function? bitrex <user@example.net> - 2026-02-13 13:00 -0500
          Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-13 10:52 -0800
        Re: cheap analog square function? bitrex <user@example.net> - 2026-02-13 13:01 -0500
      Re: cheap analog square function? piglet <erichpwagner@hotmail.com> - 2026-02-13 19:36 +0000
        Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-13 12:06 -0800
          Re: cheap analog square function? piglet <erichpwagner@hotmail.com> - 2026-02-13 20:42 +0000
            Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-15 12:43 -0800
        Re: cheap analog square function? Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com> - 2026-02-16 09:36 -0900
          Re: cheap analog square function? Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> - 2026-02-18 00:03 +1100
            Re: cheap analog square function? john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> - 2026-02-17 08:06 -0800
        Re: cheap analog square function? Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com> - 2026-02-16 13:08 -0900
          Re: cheap analog square function? piglet <erichpwagner@hotmail.com> - 2026-02-17 11:40 +0000
            Re: cheap analog square function? Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> - 2026-02-17 12:34 -0500
              Re: cheap analog square function? Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de> - 2026-02-17 18:57 +0100
                Re: cheap analog square function? Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> - 2026-02-17 18:18 +0000
                Re: cheap analog square function? Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de> - 2026-02-17 19:39 +0100
                Re: cheap analog square function? Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> - 2026-02-17 14:00 -0500
                Re: cheap analog square function? Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> - 2026-02-18 15:10 +1100
              Re: cheap analog square function? Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> - 2026-02-18 14:43 +1100
          Re: cheap analog square function? Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> - 2026-02-18 01:43 +1100
      Re: cheap analog square function? Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> - 2026-02-14 05:53 +0000

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