OpenBSD on Motorola 88000 Processors

An excellent source for this architecture is Mitch Alsup and his Usenet posts going back to the late 1980s (he still posted regularly in the 2020s.)

I still have some of the 88000 reference manuals, and it was really my first introduction to RISC architecture, and I thought it was great. But I never figured out why companies like Apple never chose it for their CPU?

I confess I have a soft spot for these machines - the road not taken is always tempting to explore. Sadly, it didn't do well on the market, even less in Europe, so there are very few working machines around me and even fewer floating around on eBay. :-(

The 88k multi-chip cache/MMU architecture is fascinating, especially how it could be designed with a single cache chip, or a split I/D cache across two or more different chips.

Weird to see Omron mentioned. I have a digital weight scale from them in my bathroom :)

m88k is an ISA primarily designed by Mitch Alsup.

Mitch Alsup has extensive experience in ISA design, has participated (tangentially) in informing RISC-V design process.

Recently, he's designed my66000, an interesting, fresh take at a new ISA that I recommend exploring.

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