MOmonocasa·Jun 2, 2026
So, I've read Computation Structures. And agreed, an absolutely fantastic text. [0]
However, my question is kind of orthogonal to vertical versus horizontal microcode.
As a counter example I'd point to the microcode format of the system 370/145, which while pretty clearly being something that would be described as vertical microcode also doesn't have implicit control flow [1]. It's a little on the wide side for vertical microcode at 32 bits, I'll grant you, but it has an op field(s) with about a dozen variants that then is used to further decode the other fields, at an overall decode complexity comparable to a RISC arch. Horizontal microcode looks more like 'these specific bits just always plug into this mux, and are simply set to some default if unused in this specific operation, reducing decode to essentially wires'. That being sai
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d, it also doesn't have an incrementer on the program counter, with the last byte of instructions encoding a (conditional) branch to the next instruction[2].
For another example, I'd point to modern microcode formats in Intel and AMD cores. They pretty universally have a vertical microcode instruction format (though grouped into triads or quads of instructions typically) then paired with explicit, dedicated microprogram control flow field for the group. The uops there are pretty wide at 48-64 bits typical, but they sort of need to be to fit immediates that are common for 64 bit archs, and also fit into that RISC like level of decode complexity you see in vertical microcode. [3]
[0] - As an aside, if you like Computation Structures, I'd recommend The Anatomy of a High-Performance Microprocessor: A Systems Perspective by Shriver and Smith as well. The mad lads stuck a surprising amount of the RTL for the AMD K6 in that book, albeit translated into some custom academic langauge. That mid 90s era design of a multi instruction per clock CISC decoder dumping a speculative instruction stream into an OoO RISC like backend is arguably just as much peak CISC as the early 80s given that it won against the UNIX RISCs by the early 2000s and survives to this day with remarkably few tweaks relatively speaking. CISC seems to be kind of like the Roman empire; any time it starts losing the war, it just unashamedly starts integrating the concepts of its competitor it's losing to. Which is great in this case. That's called good engineering.
[1] - Pages A2-A5 for an overview, chapter 4 for a more in depth discussion. https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/370/fe/3145/SY24-3581-1_31...
[2] - Though it does have an explicit far jump/call instruction for control flow outside that window addressable by that byte, and a couple other bits sometimes depending on the instruction format.
[3] - https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit... and https://github.com/chip-red-pill/uCodeDisasm