Is RISC faster

[Frode Odegard]

I think maybe National Semiconductor should be given some credit for their
work on the 32532 and (the upcoming) 32764. This is CISC at its best, the
instruction set has been exactly the same since good old 16032 (later
renamed to 32016) came out out, only that the implementation has been
vastly improved of course.

Maybe Sun should have looked at NS?  I'd pick NS over SPARC any day if I
were to build a computer running high-level language applications. With
RISC there is also the problem with generating good code. Some of the
commercial RISC implementations are so "obscure" that the compiler writers
have to make sure to insert "pause" instructions to avoid some nasty
effects. With nice instruction sets like the one of the NS32000 family,
compiler writers don't have to think in terms of what goes on INTERNALLY
in the cpu. Maybe this isn't so bad with SPARC, I dunno.

Sun having picked SPARC whoever, I think it is nice that they want people
to make clones. Cheap SPARC clones would be nice, maybe Sun will be able
to make the PC recolution happen all over again, only in the workstation
world? At least this is what they're telling us...

	- Frode

Frode L. Odegard
Modula-2 CASE Systems
NORWAY (EUROPE)
Email: frode at m2cs.uu.no