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From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: RISC vs CISC (rational discussion, not religious wars)
Keywords: predictions
Message-ID: <39071@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 20 Nov 89 23:07:55 GMT
References: <503@ctycal.UUCP> <15126@haddock.ima.isc.com> <507@ctycal.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV
Reply-To: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lines: 14

| From: ingoldsb@ctycal.UUCP (Terry Ingoldsby)
| 
| Aside from the obvious hardware waste (I've heard of working mainframes
| dismantled with hammers and thrown in garbage trucks) there are very
| substantial software porting costs.

  Nothing against the rest of your argument, but I think you over-
estimate the cost of porting software in the contemporary world.
Companies are tending to write less and less of their software in a
machine dependent manner (excepting companies intent on destroying
themselves.)  There is machine dependent code being written, but it's
being isolated from the main line code in well defined abstractions.

Casey