I guess now that processors are chips instead of boards there isn't any microcode firmware. It's all hardwired logic etched/plated into the silicon. Rumor was that a VAX 11/750 was a VAX 11/780 with NOPs in the microcode. :-) -----Original Message----- From: William Chops Westfield Sent: Jun 7, 2004 5:09 PM To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: [PIC:] PIC10F article - also S5400 roll yer own uP On Monday, Jun 7, 2004, at 09:33 US/Pacific, Charles Craft wrote: > It's a 1 MIP chip, right? Right. > > > "Not so many years ago DEC's VAX 11/780 was reckoned the first > computer to execute 1 million instructions per second. Not very likely. DEC was (in)famous for declaring the vax a "1 mips" computer, despite assorted evidence to the contrary, and of course the extreme ambiguity of trying to measure computer performance based on the instruction cycle time. Thereafter, assorted somewhat standardized benchmarks were often presented in terms of "Vax MIPs"; if you ran the benchmark 3 times as fast as a vax, your computer was said to be capable of "4 vax mips." In any case, the vax was by no means the fastest computer available in its day (although it possibly hit new price/performance ratios...) BillW -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.