Summary of Request for Comparison of Altos and NCR

John F. Haugh II jfh at rpp386.cactus.org
Thu Oct 18 21:43:30 AEST 1990


In article <CEDMAN.90Oct17082702 at lynx.ps.uci.edu> cedman at lynx.ps.uci.edu (Carl Edman) writes:
>Just a short and (IMHO funny) note: Do you know how many instructions
>a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Coding) CPU by IBM has ? 186 !
>Yes, this is the number of the machine instructions for the new
>IBM 6000 series.

the definition which seems to be in place at IBM regarding the
S/6000 is "reduced instruction set cycles".  one of the early
goals of RISC was to have every instruction execute in one clock
(with the possible exception of load and store).  the S/6000
may execute as many as 5 instructions in a single clock.  so
in one sense it is still very RISC-like, it just has too damned
many instructions for some people.

my next question is - who cross-posted this thing to so many
newsgroups???
-- 
John F. Haugh II                             UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
Ma Bell: (512) 832-8832                           Domain: jfh at rpp386.cactus.org
"SCCS, the source motel!  Programs check in and never check out!"
		-- Ken Thompson



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