Re: Cost of handling misaligned access

On Tue, 4 Feb 2025 20:45 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
jgd@cix.co.uk (John Dallman) wrote:

In article <vnrrmg$2adb$1@gal.iecc.com>, johnl@taugh.com (John Levine)
wrote:

According to MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com>: 

while Intel 432 taught us why we did not bit
aligned decoders (and a lot of other things). 

It was certainly an interesting experiment in yet another way that
Intel wanted programmers to use their computers and the programmers
said, naah. 

 
It didn't get that far. There were no low-cost i432 systems, so the
ingenious software developers of the early 1980s carried on using more
conventional microprocessors.
 

Do you mean that there were high-cost i432 systems?
I can't find anything in Wikipedia, but would guess that all
programmers/organizations that had access to i432 hardware, did not pay
money for it.
Not dissimilar to Merced 17-18 years later except that number of the
systems that was given away in early 80s was probably 3 orders of
magnitude lower than in late 90s.
Just speculating...

The DoD wanted ADA, but the new software companies of the period
weren't especially interested in selling to them. Making money in the
civilian business software and games markets was far easier and more
fun.
 
John