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Article #2005

Re: Instruction (dis)continuation

#2005
From: R. Vuurboom
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1989 18:21
28 lines
1757 bytes
I've noticed that motorola has moved from instruction continuation
(68010-30) to instruction restart (68040). So they no longer support
virtual machines. (Must be the processors got tired of puking their
insides all over the stack. :-)

Quoting the 68030 manual:

Instruction continuation is used to support virtual I/O devices in
memory-mapped input/output systems. Control and data registers for
the virtual are simulated in the memory map. An access to a virtual
register causes a fault and the function of the register is emulated
by software.

Anybody know why this instruction discontinuation? 

Is virtual machine emulation a lovely idea whose time has come and gone? 

Or does it use too many hardware resources?

I think some (all?) of the risc processors use instruction restart (mips if
I remember correctly) so are we looking at the end of instruction continuation?


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Roelof Vuurboom  SSP/V3   Philips TDS Apeldoorn, The Netherlands   +31 55 432226
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From: roelof@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (R. Vuurboom)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Instruction (dis)continuation
Summary: Instruction continuation discontination?
Message-ID: <231@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Date: 25 Aug 89 18:21:08 GMT
References: <AGLEW.89Aug21205533@chant.urbana.mcd.mot.com> <1989Aug24.215104.156@mentor.com>
Organization: Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems, The Netherlands
Lines: 28