gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu (05/19/88)
For those of you who enjoy "diddling microcode", the AMD 2900 has been
around almost forever (well, 10+ years -- it was used in the Xerox
DLion, which DOES switch instruction sets, although only during
world-swap). And there's the AMD29000 in case you want 16 or 32-bit
performance. So I don't think the japanese chip is any great
breakthrough.
Don Gillies {ihnp4!uiucdcs!gillies} U of Illinois
{gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu}tim@amdcad.AMD.COM (Tim Olson) (05/20/88)
In article <76700024@uiucdcsp> gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes: | | For those of you who enjoy "diddling microcode", the AMD 2900 has been | around almost forever (well, 10+ years -- it was used in the Xerox | DLion, which DOES switch instruction sets, although only during | world-swap). And there's the AMD29000 in case you want 16 or 32-bit | performance. So I don't think the japanese chip is any great | breakthrough. There seems to be a lot of confusion out there regarding the Am29xxx part numbers (probably due to the desire to keep the name recognition for our new processor ;-), so to clear things up: Am2900 - family of microprogrammable, bit-slice devices (4-bit alus, 4 and 12-bit sequencers, etc.) implemented in TTL and CMOS Am29100 - family of microprogrammable devices (16-bit alus, 12-bit sequencers) implemented in TTL and CMOS Am29300 - family of "functionally partitioned" microprogrammable devices (not bit-slice -- 32-bit alus, 18-bit register files [two in parallel give you 32 bits + parity], 16-bit sequencers) implemented in ECL internal, TTL I/O, as well as CMOS Am29000 - family of fixed-instruction-set CMOS RISC processors (also includes 29027 Arithmetic Accelerator, 29062 Integrated Cache Unit and 29041 Data Transfer Controller) There. Clear as mud now, right? ;-) -- Tim Olson Advanced Micro Devices (tim@amdcad.amd.com)