VAX Macro

VAX Macro is the computer assembly language implementing the instruction set for the line of CPUs designed to run the OpenVMS operating system created by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1977. OpenVMS now belongs to Hewlett-Packard.

The syntax, directives, macro language, and lexical substitution operators of VAX Macro previously appeared in Macro-11, the assembler for the PDP-11 series of computers. VAX Macro or, as it was also known, Macro-32, supported the VAX processors developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation. It ran under the VAX/VMS operating system and produced object files suitable for the VAX/VMS linker. The Macro-32 assembler (and the linker) were bundled with the operating system.

In order to port VMS to the Alpha, VAX Macro was implemented for the Alpha architecture. Since the Alpha used a different instruction set than the VAX, Macro-32 was implemented as a compiler, compiling VAX assembly language into Alpha instructions.[1]

The Alpha AXP chips introduced to the VMS world then the latest progression of the VMS Macro language, supporting the underlying RISC instruction set, and was called Macro-64.

A compiler from Macro-32 is available for Intel Itanium architecture,[2] and for x86-64.[3]

References
  1. Nancy P. Kronenberg; Thomas R. Benson; Wayne M. Cardoza; Ravindran Jagannathan; Benjamin J. Thomas III (1992). "Porting OpenVMS from VAX to Alpha AXP" (PDF). Digital Technical Journal. 4 (4).
  2. HP OpenVMS ask the wizard - Macro32 Assemblers and Compilers? OpenVMS I64?
  3. "State of the Port to x86, March 2016" (PDF). March 2016. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-10-29.
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