Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!mephisto!gatech!dcatla!holos0!lbr
From: lbr@holos0.uucp (Len Reed)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Why The Move To RISC Architectures?  ('386 vs. RISC)
Message-ID: <1990Mar21.210152.3294@holos0.uucp>
Date: 21 Mar 90 21:01:52 GMT
References: <28011@cup.portal.com> <1990Mar20.233504.4946@seri.gov>
Reply-To: lbr@holos0.UUCP (Len Reed)
Organization: Holos Software, Inc., Atlanta, GA
Lines: 42

In article <1990Mar20.233504.4946@seri.gov> marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl) writes:

>Just a wild guess.  Hardware guys like RISC, software guys like CISC.
>RISC puts the work on the shoulders of the software folks.  It's easier
>to impliment RISC in hardware.  If I were developing software in
>assembler, I'd probably hate RISC.

>Marshall L. Buhl, Jr.                EMAIL: marshall@wind55.seri.gov
>Senior Computer Engineer             VOICE: (303)231-1014

This shows some odd reasoning for someone with the title of "Senior
Computer Engineer."  In my experience hardware people *love* to do
complicated things in hardware, and software people love to do
complicated stuff in software.  This makes the job interesting
and keeps management from being able to hire people who are not as good.
Sure, there are a lot of people who want their jobs to be easy rather
than interesting, but they aren't the folks doing state of the art
microprocessor and compiler design.  (This is not to say that people
like fighting stupid challenges, like working with poor tooling.)

RISC does *not* put the burden on the software folks, but rather upon
a small subset of them: compiler writers.  Or really, compiler writers
involved in optimization and code generation.  As to developing software
in assembler for a RISC machine: you don't do it, or you do only a tiny
amount of it.  Most software people, even in operating systems, will
use something above the assembler level.  You speak as if "writing in
assembler" is a choice made independent of architecture, as if some problems
are naturals for assembler and some are not.  Nonsense.  The idea is
to do almost everything in a language *above* the base architecture
level in a RISC machine; things that are coded in assembler on a CISC
would not necessarily be so coded on a RISC.

The alleged benefit of RISC has *nothing* to do with ease of implementation,
except as that affects speed.  It's supposed to be faster.  (Whether it
will be in the long run is yet to be seen.)  I find it amazing that you
could envision a bunch of microprocessor designers saying "To hell with
this, let's just dump it all on the software guys."
-- 
Len Reed
Holos Software, Inc.
Voice: (404) 496-1358
UUCP: ...!gatech!holos0!lbr