alt Hacker NewsMinimax is a super cool design! I think it's not really a counterexample, because it does implement the uncompressed instructions, just more slowly.
Minimax is a super cool design! I think it's not really a counterexample, because it does implement the uncompressed instructions, just more slowly.
The LUT counts do look competitive, until you realise that this doesn't include the cost of the microcode.
Probably fine on FPGA where there's lots of almost free BRAM, but on an ASIC where you'd need to use SRAM or mask ROM, or if you used LUTRAM, it would look very different.
Plus, the speed penalty for the microcoded instructions is huge. perhaps not as huge as SeRV :-)