What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 1986
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Andrew Swallow
The Z80 came out in 1976 and was a single chip beastie that cost a fraction of the price to make + sell.
Highly unlikely until the late 90s. -11s would have done better kicking the 8086 into an early grave. AFAICT you do not have much idea about workstations and why their CPUs were a breed apart in the 80s and 90s. -11's would have made abysmal workstation CPUs, that doesn't mean the -11 sucked, it just was not aimed at high-bandwidth high-FP performance mbuttive- address space applications.
It would have needed a new ISA - which is what the VAX and the 386 were about. Sun started with a 32 bit capable architecture in the first place, then moved on to one that would provide better bang for buck.
You were taught????!!!! And, since it was 7th grade, you couldn't have asked why without...
Point 1) The workstation software is all new, so it really doesn't matter what architecture you come up with as long as it's quick and cost-effective. Point 2) Playing addressing mode games slows down your OS, your software and hurts the bang for buck equation... So WHY DO IT WHEN YOU DO NOT NEED TO ?
Don't get me wrong, I like -11s, I just can't see the point of using it in preference to architectures that fit the application domain better. I *strongly* advise you to read the papers by John chickene of IBM and look up the ACS-1 info. Mark Smotherman has some useful web pages about it.
Cheers, Rupert