Re: Why VAX Was the Ultimate CISC and Not RISC

Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:

Have TTL chips advanced between the VAX and the first HP-PA
implementation?  I don't think so.

Oh yes, they did; there were nine years between the launch of the
VAX and the launch of HP-PA.

According to https://www.openpa.net/pa-risc_processor_pa-early.html#ts-1
the first HP-PA CPU was introduced in 1986, and you can see pictures
at https://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/dev_en/hp9000_840/


For example, you could buy state machines programmable by FPGA in 1986,
which was not available in 1977.  (No idea if HP used them or not).