VAX

VAX, (Virtual Address Extension)
an instruction set architecture, developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the mid-1970s, to extend the PDP-11 architecture to a 32-bit orthogonal instruction set while adding a complete virtual memory system to the simple paging and memory protection of the PDP-11.
The first computer to use a VAX CPU was the VAX-11/780, which DEC referred to as a Superminicomputer [2].
DEC's VAX strategy was formulated by Gordon Bell [3].
Contents
Registers
VAX has 16 32-bit registers, R0-R15. R0-R11 general purpose, R12/AP the argument pointer, R13/FP the frame pointer, R14/SP the stack pointer, and R15/PC the program counter or instruction pointer.
Instructions
The general form of a VAX instruction ...
opcode [ operand ] [ operand ] ...
... has each component being one byte, the opcode a value in the range 0 - 255, and each operand consisting of two nibbles, the upper 4 bits specifying an addressing mode, and the lower 4 bits (usually) a register number (R0 - R15).
MicroVAX
The MicroVAX was a family of low-end minicomputers implemented the VAX instruction set architecture, first introduced in 1984.
Chess Programs
See also
External Links
- VAX from Wikipedia
- List of VAX computers from Wikipedia
- NVAX from Wikipedia
- VAX-11 from Wikipedia
- VAX 8000 from Wikipedia
- VAX 7000/10000 from Wikipedia
- VAXstation from Wikipedia
- MicroVAX from Wikipedia
- MicroVAX 78032 from Wikipedia
- VAX Macro from Wikipedia
- OpenVMS from Wikipedia
References
- ↑ The SPEC-1 VAX, the VAX 11/780 that was used as the benchmark for the speed of each of DEC's VAXes. Now on display at the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, Photo by Joe Mabel, August 03, 2009, VAX from Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons
- ↑ Digital Equipment Corporation - VAX from Wikipedia
- ↑ Beyond VAX: A Conversation with Gordon Bell. Computerworld, September 2, 1987, pdf from The Computer History Museum
- ↑ Die shot of DEC MicroVAX 78032-GD microprocessor from VAXstation2000 with chip number DC333R and part number 21-20887-05 on heatsink. Image by Pauli Rautakorpi, August 23, 2013,