From: tkoenig@netcologne.de   
      
   Dan Cross  schrieb:   
      
   [Snipping the previous long discussion]   
      
   > My contention is that while it was _feasible_ to build a   
   > RISC-style machine for what became the VAX,   
      
   There, we agree.   
      
   > that by itself is   
   > only a part of the puzzle.  One must also take into account   
   > market and business contexts; perhaps such a machine would have   
   > been faster,   
      
   With a certainty, if they followed RISC principles.   
      
   > but I don't think anyone _really_ knew that to be   
   > the case in 1975 when design work on the VAX started,   
      
   That is true.  Reading   
   https://acg.cis.upenn.edu/milom/cis501-Fall11/papers/cocke-RISC.pdf   
   (I liked the potential toung-in-cheek "Regular Instruction   
   Set-Computer" name for their instruction set).   
      
   > and even   
   > fewer would have believed it absent a working prototype,   
      
   The simulation approach that IBM took is interesting.  They built   
   a fast simulator, translating one 801 instruciton into one (or   
   several) /370-instructions on the fly, with a fixed 32-bit size.   
      
      
   > which   
   > wouldn't arrive with the 801 for several years after the VAX had   
   > shipped commercially.   
      
   That is clear.  It was the premise of this discussion that the   
   knowledge had been made available (via time travel or some other   
   strange means) to a company, which would then have used the   
   knowledge.   
      
   > Furthermore, Digital would have   
   > understood that many customers would have expected to be able to   
   > program their new machine in macro assembler.   
      
   Programming a RISC in assembler is not so hard, at least in my   
   experience.  Plus, people overestimated use of assembler even in   
   the mid-1975s, and underestimated the use of compilers.   
   [...]   
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