> I have been following this discussion for a while, and its quite
> interesting. I had a conversation with an HP engineer the other
> day that you all might find interesting. We were talking about
> assembly language programming, and he told me that it was
> effectively impossible for people to write assembler for Merced.
> Apparently the compiler is responsible for keeping track of a lot
> of the CPU state information, and its a very complex process.
As I understand VLIW architecture, the distinction between machine
instructions (aka assembler) and microcode is somewhat blurred. If that
is correct, then I would tend to believe his assessment.
Steve