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From: csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst)
Newsgroups: comp.realtime
Subject: Re: What is the future of realtime and RISC?
Message-ID: <157142@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Date: 30 May 91 04:14:46 GMT
References: <1991May15.210430.1134@nbc1.ge.com>
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 20

>All the realtime software vendors I've spoken with tell me that the
>Motorola 680x0 architecture is still the dominant one used in the
>realtime world.

Actually, no. The dominant architecture in realtime and embedded systems is
the Intel MCS-48 family, including the 8051. That should tell you a lot of the
reason why you don't see more RISC chips. Realtime is very conservative, and
very cost sensitive: you don't use a processor that costs any more than you
have to. Pyramid is still doing all kinds of imbedded stuff with the 68000 --
despite our main systems using the MIPS R3000 -- because the 68000 does every-
thing we need it to do. Only for some new specialized stuff are we going to
faster processors, where we can prove customers need that performance.

Note that 99.9999% of the CISC vs. RISC issues are academic blither, of no
consequence to the developer. The valid questions are: how fast does it go?
What are the memory bandwidth requirements? Real estate, and glue chips? Can
I predict latencies? And by far the most important of all: how much does it
cost? You'll get answers all over the map, for both RISC and CISC.

<csg>