Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!spool.mu.edu!think.com!linus!linus!linus!bs From: bs@linus.mitre.org (Robert D. Silverman) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Computers for users not programmers Message-ID: <1991Feb14.151831.15426@linus.mitre.org> Date: 14 Feb 91 15:18:31 GMT References: <3159:Feb1213:56:3091@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Feb12.192725.21029@Think.COM> <2922@risky.Convergent.COM> Sender: news@linus.mitre.org (News Service) Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730 Lines: 42 Nntp-Posting-Host: linus.mitre.org In article <2922@risky.Convergent.COM> scottl@convergent.com (Scott Lurndal) writes: :In article <1991Feb12.192725.21029@Think.COM>, barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes: stuff deleted. :If you look at some of the dedicated COBOL engines (such as the UNISYS V-Series :(old Burroughs Medium Systems) line), you will find that the instruction set :will not support C with any efficiency at all, and FORTRAN is marginal. : :The point? You cannot design a processor which is all things to all people :(the swiss army knife processor - (well the B1900 was a good start)). If you :design a processor around any particular language, you have reduced the :overall usefullness of that processor. Some of the current risc chips are :quite fast with scientific/systems applications (using C/Fortran/Pascal, et. al.); :but performance falls rapidly when you start running COBOL applications which :require translation from BCD<->binary before and after each arithmetic op. : Yes. However, if DOUBLE PRECISION integer arithmetic were supported, the need for BCD would totally disappear. Not only that, the integer arithmetic would be at least an order of magnitude FASTER. There is no inherent reason why the dollars and cents calculations [read: extended precison] cannot be done in integer arithmetic. It would require that the code emitter of some COBOL compilers be modified to use integer, rather than BCD instructions, but this is not terribly difficult to do. Under these circumstances, both scientific and COBOL users would benefit. ---- :Now I personally don't like COBOL, but I recognize that there is a tremendous :investment in COBOL programs in industry - and they are not going to go away :tomorrow. No COBOL programs would change -- only the compilers would change. -- Bob Silverman #include Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730 "You can lead a horse's ass to knowledge, but you can't make him think"