Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!spool.mu.edu!uunet!brunix!rca From: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: RISC vs. CISC -- SPECmarks Message-ID: <71367@brunix.UUCP> Date: 9 Apr 91 06:05:33 GMT References: <14483@life.ai.mit.edu> <4753@lectroid.sw.stratus.com> <34936@athertn.Atherton.COM> <27fa3350.6bc2@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> Sender: news@brunix.UUCP Reply-To: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science Lines: 36 In article melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: >All most companies would have to do is type 'make' to recompile their >programs if NeXT switched to a RISC chip. Yes, and then put out a new pricelist telling the user the typical workstation-pricelist story: more performance = higher price. Hell, NO! And then, all the upgrade fees to pay... If RISC were software you would call it a hack, (or a C program with tons of gotos for that matter). Of course a hack is faster (sometimes) but it is not better. Use hacks where you absolutely have to i.e. where you are hitting the limits of technology e.g. in supercomputers. But leave it off our desks. Guess why NeXT went with Objective-C or why other people go with Lisp. Not because it is the fastest, but because it is clean. I don't care if a program is a few percents slower as long as it is maintainable. Say no to hacks, say no to RISC (at least in SPARC-like incarnations). In addition, the 68040 has built-in support for multi-processing. Which of the RISC chips does? (This is a real question). If there is any, then that's the one NeXT is most likely to choose, since I would guess multiprocessing is a more general solution to performance problems than any RISC-hack can offer, and thus I would suspect NeXT is putting a higher priority on that than on RISC. Just my 0.02$ Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." G.B. Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet