🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi!

There has been a debate going on about the NeXT computer, if 
it will be able to keep up with the competition because of the
CISC nature of the Motorola 68040. I am no expert on this
subject, so please do not flame me if this posting is all wrong.

IMHO the main advantage that RISC arcitechtures has over CISC
is that register operations are faster than memory operations
and that the compiler writer do not know good ways to use the
more complex ones of the instructions of a CISC processor. This
is NOW. Whe have "only" about 1 miljon transistors in the most
complex processors today (RISC or CISC). But we will soon have
fabrication techniques to produce chips with 10 miljon transistors.
Then there will be room for (on a single chip) a really complex 
CISC processor (with tons of microcode), a huge amount of registers
(register to register operations ARE faster), a big memory cache
(with some very complex associative control logic) and maybe even
some interesting "extras" (math processor with vector operations,
MMU, DMA, multiple CPU:s, you name it). If this processor is built
AND if compiler technology keeps up, i can *NOT* see any technical
reasons why this machine will not make any RISC look like some
kind of primitive *AND* slow joke. With complex instructions
there will be less bus bandwidth wasted on instructions. Am i
mistaken? Is compiler technology on its absolute height of
evolution? Please explain this matters to me, and is there
any good books on this subject? No flames please, i am
no expert and i will never be one if no one tells me.

Thanx,
Roland.
rolande@yyc.docs.uu.se