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From: hes@ecsvax.UUCP (Henry Schaffer)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: RISC/CISC - IBM mainframes
Message-ID: <1452@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Jun-85 19:01:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.1452
Posted: Mon Jun 10 19:01:11 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Jun-85 07:49:17 EDT
Organization: NC State Univ.
Lines: 12

I have just heard a presentation by IBM on large systems directions.
It was predicted that an increasing amount of operating system
functions would be embodied in microcode.  This seems to be the
opposite of RISC - with a vengance.
They find that system functions are significantly sped up by this
approach, which does seem to be a good point.  (I'm sure that they
also find that using microcode also gives them a competitive
advantage with regards to the PCM's.)  Also it was pointed out
that this makes MIPS even less meaningful, since some of these
new microcoded instructions are comparable to an entire program,
and yet just get counted as one instruction.
--henry schaffer  n c state univ