Traditional (CISC) Machines

Complex Instruction Set Computers (CISC)

• complicated instruction set

• different instruction formats and lengths
• different addressing modes
• e.gVAX or PDP-11 from DEC
• e.g. Intel x86 family

1
 VAX Architecture
Virtual Address Extension

Memory: All addresses are byte address

• word (2bytes)
• longword (4bytes)
• quadworad (8bytes)
• octaword (16bytes)
All VAX programs operate in a virtual address space of 232

bytes

2
 VAX Architecture
Registers
16 general purpose registers: R0~R15
• each register is 32-bit long
• R15 (PC): Program Counter
• R14 (SP): Stack Pointer
• R13 (FP): Frame Pointer
• R12 (AP): Argument Pointer
• R6~R11: general
• R0~R5: are used by some instructions
3
 VAX Architecture
Data Formats
• Integers: byte, word, longword, quadword, or
octaword
• Negative integers: 2’s complement representation
• Floating-point: 4~16bytes
• packed decimal: (C:positive, D:negative,
F:unsigned)

4
 VAX Architecture
Instruction Formats
• variable -length instruction format

Addressing Modes
• register mode
• register deferred mode
• autoincrement and autodecrement modes
• several base relative addressing modes

5
 VAX Architecture
Instruction Set
The instruction mnemonics are formed by
• a prefix that specifies the type of operation
• a suffix that specifies the data type of the
operands
• a modifier that gives the number of operands
involved
• e.g. ADDW2, MULL3, CVTWL

6
 VAX Architecture
A single instruction
• saves a designated set of registers
• passes a list of arguments to the procedure
• maintains the stack, frame, and argument
pointers
• sets a mask to enable error traps for arithmetic
operations

7
 VAX Architecture
Input and Output

• I/O device controllers

• Each controller has a set of control/status and data
registers,
• No special instructions required