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(off-topic) RISC

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: (off-topic) RISC
• From: Richard Tobin <richard@c...>
• Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 15:41:35 GMT
• Cc:
• In-reply-to: <200203181519.KAA17557@m...>
• Organization: HCRC, University of Edinburgh

>You are almost certainly reading this email on a computer with a
>RISC processor -- pretending to be a CISC processor.

That's one way of looking at it.  Another is that RISC allowed the
adoption of mainframe techniques in microprocessors, but we've now got
to the stage where we can implement them even for CISC processors.  As
a result, modern CISC processors look quite similar to modern RISC
processors, and neither of them looks much like how RISC was
originally envisaged.

(In fact, I'm writing this on a RISC processor from a family that was
originally so RISCy that it didn't even have an integer multiply
instruction.)

-- Richard

• References:
  • Re: Tim Bray on "Which Technologies Matter?"
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>

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