Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!ames!vsi1!daver!mips!wyse!stevew
From: stevew@wyse.wyse.com (Steve Wilson xttemp dept303)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Double Width Integer Multiplication and Division
Message-ID: <2274@wyse.wyse.com>
Date: 1 Jul 89 00:15:50 GMT
References: <1035@aber-cs.UUCP> <1370@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@wyse.wyse.com
Reply-To: stevew@wyse.UUCP (Steve Wilson xttemp dept303)
Organization: Wyse Technology
Lines: 27

In article <1370@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>In article <1035@aber-cs.UUCP>, pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>> In article <1989Jun26.195044.4197@cs.rochester.edu> crowl@cs.rochester.edu
>> (Lawrence Crowl) writes:
>> 
>> 	[1] You are not supposed to write assembler programs on a RISC
>> 	    machine. The compilers have sophisticated algorithms to generate
>> 	    "optimal" multiplication/division out of simpler instructions.
>
>I find this attitude arrogant.  Neither you nor anyone else knows what 
>complicated operations I want to do.  Why should you try to make it 
>difficult for me to use the power of the computer?

Ok, now we have a chance to start the HLL versus assembly wars again ;-)

Seriously, there are machines that were NEVER meant to be programmed in
assembly!  Try programming a VLIW machine in assembly.  Chances are that unless
your the guy that architected it, or wrote the compilers for it, you can't.
(I've worked on such a box, at best it certainly ain't easy ;-)

I don't find it an arrogant attitude so much as an assumption that in
the GENERAL case allows the computer architect to make the best trade-
offs he can to allow the machine go as fast as possible for the largest
number of users in the machine's targeted market place.  


Steve Wilson