Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!news From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: RISC vs. CISC -- SPECmarks Message-ID: <9sbG8*dl1@cs.psu.edu> Date: 10 Apr 91 00:04:35 GMT References: <27fa3350.6bc2@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> <71367@brunix.UUCP> <1991Apr09.083600.13051@kithrup.COM> Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet) Organization: Penn State Computer Science Lines: 36 In-Reply-To: sef@kithrup.COM's message of 9 Apr 91 08:36:00 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: sunws5.sys.cs.psu.edu In article <1991Apr09.083600.13051@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: How in Gaea's name did you reach that conclusion? Most RISC instruction sets, the MIPS in particular, are extremely well thought out and researched, just the *opposite* of what one would call a "hack." It doesn't matter what the assembler code looks like anyway, all the programmer has to do is type cc or make. >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. Objective C has *never* struct me as "clean." It always strikes me as an obvious hack on top of C. C++ is cleaner, although not perfect. Objective C has far fewer extensions to the C language and is based more on the Smalltalk paradigm. I would say that it is definitely cleaner. C++ is thorny, and BS is still changing the language. I hope that Eiffel works out well on the NeXT. 88k, R3000 or R4000. I doubt that NeXT will chose the SPARC, although they might. The 88k is from Motorola, as is the 68k line, so that might be an incentive. On the other hand, the MIPS chips are *fast*, and the R4000 is a 64-bit machine (both addresses and integer registers are 64-bits wide), which provides for future requirements. Go read comp.arch. I hope someone at NeXT does. Which chip might be moot though, considering the politics involved. I think that the 68040 will be around for a couple of more years. It still fits in nicely at the low-end of the market. -Mike