Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!ksr!joy!fdr
From: fdr@joy.ksr.com (Franklin Reynolds)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: RISC != real-time control
Message-ID: <327@ksr.UUCP>
Date: 27 Apr 88 15:32:32 GMT
References: <1521@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1532@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: nobody@ksr.UUCP
Reply-To: fdr@ksr.UUCP (Franklin Reynolds)
Organization: Kendall Square Research, Cambridge MA
Lines: 17
Keywords: RISC, real-time

Another similar question about RISC vrs. realtime is whether the philosophy
of optimising for the general case instead of the exception is appropriate.

As I understand it, optimising for the general case is fundamental to most
RISC designs. Modern, sophisticated realtime systems that have to deal with
hard time constraints and overload conditions might be better served by
architectures that are optimized for various exceptional conditions.

You could imagine an architecture optimized for speedy interrupt handling,
context switching, process ordering, IPC, etc. This architecture might have
advantages for certain types of realtime applications over designs that
optimized for throughput in the general case.

   Franklin Reynolds 			Kendall Square Research Corporation
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