home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: comp.arch
- Path: sparky!uunet!ferkel.ucsb.edu!taco!rock!stanford.edu!ames!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!caen!destroyer!gumby!yale!yale.edu!ira.uka.de!smurf.sub.org!incom!orfeo!qb!vhs
- From: vhs@rhein-main.de (Volker Herminghaus-Shirai)
- Subject: RISC goes CISC?
- Message-ID: <1992Nov6.092012.19239@rhein-main.de>
- Sender: vhs@rhein-main.de (Volker Herminghaus-Shirai)
- Reply-To: vhs@rhein-main.de
- Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 09:20:12 GMT
- Lines: 30
-
- I was wondering lately...
- Wasn't one of the principles of RISC the principle of putting as much work
- as possible from execution to compile time?
- Under this assumption, how does e.g. SuperSPARC fit this principle? As far
- as I know the processor does a lot of cross-checking between pipelines,
- squashing instructions depending on non-trivial conditions, etc. Is that done
- just to maintain compatibility with previous implementations?
- Could, theoretically, the most recent compilers take care of this
- at compile-time, thus eliminating the need for run time
- checking (again theoretically since people want to run their old code).
- Wasn't the architectural(?) definition of using exactly one delay slot
- extremely short sighted, taking into account the much longer pipelines in
- current implementations?
- Aren't pipelines necessary so that instructions that take several cycles
- (i.e. "complicated" instructions) can be issued one per cycle? Wouldn't
- it conform more to the RISC principle to keep instructions so simple
- that they only *need* one cycle to execute and concentrate on a *fast*
- memory interface instead? Will RISC go the way that CISC went?
- Will PCs ever compare favorably to workstations? Will Jane marry Tarzan?
- Will this nonsense ever end? Will someone answer?
- ...
-
- This is not meant to flame SPARC processors. They're just the RISC
- processor I know best (which does not say much, obviously).
-
- --
- Volker Herminghaus-Shirai (vhs@rhein-main.de)
-
- I'm a .signature antivirus. Help defend the net against the evil .signature
- viruses and copy me into your .signature file.
-