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Foreword :
At first, the FC0 is a curious mix between a classical MIPS/DLX pipeline (see P&H's books) and a CDC6600 (see the excellent description in G. Bell's book "Computer Structures : Readings and Examples", now readable online). However, the ambition to surpass the early ALPHA architecture and the strong will to avoid any issue of any kind with protection or fault handling, led to design a very particular architecture. It is heavily based on speculative flags, "split" instructions and other unseen quirks. And it all looks like a "classical RISC" to the newcomers ...