Thanks, I’d been wondering about this for years. I couldn’t imagine how microcode would be directly involved with so many pipeline stages and execution units. B

Thanks, I’d been wondering about this for years. I couldn’t imagine how microcode would be directly involved with so many pipeline stages and execution units. But if it’s reserved for the “highly unusual”, it all fits together. And the explosion of transistor budgets since 8086 means we can afford to implement all but the wackiest stuff in hardware.