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Re: compilers and architecture, Just How Bad Was The Intel IAPX432?

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On Sun, 31 May 2026 07:57:23 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

> On 5/31/26 00:03, Lev wrote:
>> John Levine wrote:
>> 
>> The PL.8 retargeting result is striking - the fact that the compiler
>> designed for 801's simple instructions also produced good S/360 code
>> suggests the problem wasn't that CISC was bad, but that CISC
>> instructions compilers couldn't easily select were dead weight. Nobody
>> was emitting the fancy string instructions or decimal arithmetic unless
>> they were hand-coding.
>> 
>> 
> This is 100% wrong. Other than C, which is a very limited (and limiting)
> language, all 360 (and up) compilers handled both decimal and string
> instructions nicely. COBOL, PL/I, and I suppose, RPG all used them. Even
> in assembler I used them quite extensively.
> 
> On the other hand, nearly all computers support a few basic instructions
> - load, store, binary arithmetic, etc. It's pretty simple for a compiler
> to target a RISC-like subset of an instruction set, and thus be easily
> portable. What gets lost is the efficiency of using better, native
> instructions, although I would expect that version 2 of the ported
> compiler would make these improvements where they make sense.
> 
> Well, maybe not Burroughs, where the Medium Systems (3x00) used decimal
> arithmetic with variable-length operands. I think even the instruction
> counter was decimal.

Also see the Singer System Ten.

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Re: compilers and architecture, Just How Bad Was The Intel IAPX432? thresh3@fastmail.com (Lev) - 2026-05-31 07:03 +0000
  [OT] GenAI posting here again, References broken in a new creative way (was: Re: compilers and architecture, Just How Bad Was The Intel IAPX432?) Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-05-31 08:56 +0100
  Re: compilers and architecture, Just How Bad Was The Intel IAPX432? Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> - 2026-05-31 07:57 -0700
    Re: compilers and architecture, Just How Bad Was The Intel IAPX432? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-05-31 17:02 +0000
    Re: compilers and architecture, Just How Bad Was The Intel IAPX432? Bob Eager <throwaway0008@eager.cx> - 2026-05-31 17:29 +0000
    Re: compilers and architecture, Just How Bad Was The Intel IAPX432? John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2026-06-01 01:17 +0000
    Re: compilers and architecture, Just How Bad Was The Intel IAPX432? thresh3@fastmail.com (Lev) - 2026-06-01 07:03 +0000

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