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From: khb%chiba@Sun.COM (chiba)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Bandwidth Wasters Hall of Fame for comp.arch
Keywords: Stack, mutlitasking, e.t.c
Message-ID: <125156@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 22 Sep 89 19:08:17 GMT
References: <13744@well.UUCP> <4186@bd.sei.cmu.edu> <10732@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
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In article <10732@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> axaris@cs.buffalo.edu (Vassilios Axaris) writes:

>I have not seen too much going on, except the RTX 2000. Why is there this lack
>of interest in the designer community, when the architecture offers some clear
>advantages ...

When the world was young(er) :> , stack machines, register machines,
and direct memory machines (e.g. TI) battled for domination. Before
reasonable register allocation algorithms were discovered stack
machines were nifty ... but now having a lot (use your own figure of
merit :>) of registers and good allocation is generally
conceeded to be the short path to good performance. 

The recent discussion of adaptive caching reminds me of the remark
(anyone know who originated it ?) "registers are compiler allocatable
caches". 

Bottom line: A stack machine derives less benefit from locality of
             data reference.


Keith H. Bierman    |*My thoughts are my own. !! kbierman@sun.com
It's Not My Fault   |	MTS --Only my work belongs to Sun* 
I Voted for Bill &  | Advanced Languages/Floating Point Group            
Opus                | "When the going gets Weird .. the Weird turn PRO"