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It isn't. There is unnecessary hysteria. Encrypting microcode is just usual competitive play. Doesn't mean anything nefarious. If issues are found in the said m
by bubblethink 4y ago
It isn't. There is unnecessary hysteria. Encrypting microcode is just usual competitive play. Doesn't mean anything nefarious. If issues are found in the said microcode, that would be a different story.
- sroussey 4y agoMicrocode does spill the secrets of the hardware, so definitely don’t want competitors looking through. Old ones though are open book (of a sort). The 6502 for the apple II was obviously hand generated so it microcode is weird, but the 68k for the original Mac was pretty normal microcode as we would think of it today.
- classichasclass 4y agoThe 6502 is not microcoded, or at least not in the way we presently conceive of microcode. Its operations are driven by an on-board PLA which controls decoding and sequencing with its gates, which also explains its high performance per clock. It would be hard to call those gate connections micro-opcodes since they're not really used in that sense.
- sroussey 4y agoI did say it was weird… ;)
- colejohnson66 4y agoThe 6502 uses "horizontal microcode", which, as you said, are the individual control lines. x86 uses "vertical microcode" which is a sort-of internal RISC architecture.