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by classichasclass 1870 days ago
You could even build your own Power ISA system with Microwatt, which is fully synthesizeable and growing by leaps and bounds.

https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt

(Disclaimer: minor contributor)

I really liked PA-RISC. I thought it was a clean ISA with good performance at the time and avoided many of the pitfalls of other implementations. I think HP didn't want to pour lots of money into it to keep it competitive, though, and was happy to bail out for Itanium when it was viable. My big C8000 is a power hungry titan, makes the Quad G5 seem thrifty.

1 comments

IDK, I never really liked PA-RISC, but to be fair I was always able to look at it from a hindsight perspective. Looking back it seems to have most of the RISC issues that complicate modern ISA design. Like branch delay slots, having a multiply instruction wasn't RISCy enough for it to bother with, etc.