> On Fri, 27 Aug 1999, Jay West wrote:
>
> > Keep in mind that the merced chip was not really designed or created by
> > Intel at all.
> >=20
> > It was created almost completely by HP (by the same group responsible for
> > PA-RISC), with Intel as merely the production facilities. For obvious
> > marketing, competitive, and resource reasons both HP and Intel share the
> > rights to merced.
> >=20
> Does that mean that Merced is heir of the PA-RISC design just like PowerPC
> is the heir of IBM POWER processor family's?
>
Not actually - I understand that many people who worked on PA-RISC worked
on the initial Merced design. But, the instruction sets/implementation
are totally different.
Merced can run PA-RISC and IA32 instructions via mode bits on the chip.
It's not transparent.
- Dave Rivers -
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