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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (31057)	6/16/1999 4:55:00 PM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Sun, OT, microcoded vs. hardwired computers. Then micro-code proved too slow and everyone chose hardwire by choice. Au Contraire. Most computers I know of today are still highly microcoded. It's just that the control store for the microcode resides in the fastest memory technology (SRAM today) that is available at the time the computer is designed. The control store is also distributed as close as possible to where it's needed for fastest access. With today's chip densities, SRAM cells and control for them are printed hard by the CPU, or storage, or I/O logic they're controlling. Then, to get the microcode completely out of all critical paths, it is accessed a CPU cycle before it's needed. Magic. BTW, the reason we stay with microcoded computers is that it's the only way you stand a chance to change or add instructions to keep up with a competitor, or fix a flaw or bug, in a reasonable time period. Tony