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From: chuck@amdahl.amdahl.com (Charles Simmons)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What should be in hardware but isn't (LISP hardware?)
Message-ID: <15393@amdahl.amdahl.com>
Date: Wed, 30-Sep-87 04:17:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: amdahl.15393
Posted: Wed Sep 30 04:17:12 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Oct-87 08:25:15 EDT
References: <581@l.cc.purdue.edu> <28200048@ccvaxa> <2910@ames.arpa> <2917@ames.arpa>
Reply-To: chuck@amdahl.amdahl.com (Charles Simmons)
Organization: Amdahl Corp, Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 24
Keywords: LISP and Prolog machines

In article <2917@ames.arpa> eugene@pioneer.UUCP (Eugene Miya N.) writes:
>It's pretty obvious to putting vector and floating point hardware
>in Silicon with products like the Weitek, but I was having a discussion
>with a colleague about LISP machines, Intellicorp and all those
>companies doing "AI."  What about putting CDR hardware into machines?
>The colleague pointed out that SUN is the only company doing well in
>this arena.  Agree or disagree?  Aren't Symbolics, TI, LMI doing okay?
>
>From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
>
>--eugene miya
>  {hplabs,hao,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene

John Hennesy was giving a talk on RISC architechtures in Santa Clara
today.  You should take a look at the performance ratios between a
MIPS processor running LISP and dedicated LISP architechtures running
LISP.  MIPS seems to win big.

(Hopefully, John Mashey or some other knowledgeable person at MIPS
will correct me if I misunderstood the slide.  It may be the case
that MIPS was only comparing LISP performance against general purpose
processors like a Cray, Vax, and a couple of small LISP boxes.)

-- Chuck