🚀 go-pugleaf

uri@arnor
>	Some time ago Intel introduced iAPX-432 chip, which had a 
>	lot of goodies on board - object-oriented chip, I would
>	say.

More like terminal creaping featurism.

>	Now the question. Is it being used by ANYBODY anywhere?
>	It seems to me the chip never made the market. Can
>	anybody explain why? I'm really curious. Maybe five
>	years ago there was no need, but now it should fit
>	perfectly into almost any application demand (well,
>	I don't know its performance, but can it be that
>	bad)?

This chip used copious quantites of microcode to emulate the virtual
Ada machine.  This wasn't enough to kill it on its own, but the fact
that it was a 2 chip architecture (data path on 1 chip, uCode on the
other), and that it ran about the speed of a Z-80 had a lot to do with
it.  Intel killed it off very quietly, just like the bubble memories.
(Killing off the bubble memory division was a great pity since Intel 
made the most beautiful bubble memory controllers and interface chips 
I have ever seen.  The corresponding Western Electric bubble chips 
required a whole board of nasty analog electronics to make them work,
whereas you only needed 5 chips for the Intel approach.)

I seem to recall a paper by Ed McCreight (sp?) from Xerox on the Dragon 
Processor (ASPLOS-II, 1987).  They made a similar mistake with a multichip
CPU.
 

Jonathan A. Chandross
Internet: jac@paul.rutgers.edu
UUCP: rutgers!paul.rutgers.edu!jac