jtice@arlo.UVic.CA (Jason W. Tice) (04/25/91)
Any information regarding the RISC and CISC chips would be greatly appreciated. What does it do? what are it's parametres? what is the difference between RISC and CISC ? can you tell me where to look to find more information on them? please mail any information on either/or both of the RISC and CISC chips to jason@softwords.bc.ca or jtice@arlo.uvic.ca thank-you. I'll post what I learn! Jason W. Tice -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- / "I didn't do it man!" -- Bart Simpson \/ jtice@lester.uvic.ca \ \"I before E except after C." What a weird language. /\ jason@softwords.bc.ca / -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
fangchin@elaine54.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) (04/25/91)
In article <1991Apr24.224650.27937@sol.UVic.CA> jtice@arlo.UVic.CA (Jason W. Tice) writes: >Any information regarding the RISC and CISC chips would be greatly appreciated. > >What does it do? A good book on this is Profs. John Hennessy and David Patterson's Computer Archetectures. The first author is the orignator of MIPS, the second is the orignator of RISC (ancestor of SUN's SPARC). A very delightful and information packed book. I love it even I am a Mechanical Engineer (Sigh..) Dr. Hennessy is at Stanford and Dr. Patterson is at Berkeley. Both places are big camps of RISC (coined at Berkeley however) researches with Berkeley CAD (computer aided design) probably stronger. >what are it's parametres? Please see above reference. >what is the difference between RISC and CISC ? ditto. >can you tell me where to look to find more information on them? ^ | I believe many people would enjoy the chance of looking at kernel disk file sizes. Below I give three (vm)unix file sizes: RS6000 supersalar -> multiple instructions per clock, in the case of IBM, the number is 4 1271128 bytes SUN OS 4.1.1 on SPARC -> derivative of Berkeley RISC 1303014 bytes Ultrix 4.1 on MIPS 5500 (DEC System 5500, Stanford MIPS project decendent) 3375632 bytes How about your SysV/386 /unix? Kind of tiny comparing with the trio above right? Note, I didn't care to find out how many drivers are installed in each one. But it's safe to say they are BIG. How about the trio's performance difference? Well, IBM has the best floating point perfomance and the worst UNIX implementation, buggy and nasty to work with. But if it's fast (even the 320 has 8.5 MFLOPS, enough to leave SUN SPARC 2 in dust!) then all it's sins are forgivable to some one who crunches numbers. To system programmers? ...... Cheers Chin Fang Mechanical Engineering Department Stanford University fangchin@leland.stanford.edu
jones@acsu.buffalo.edu (terry a jones) (04/25/91)
In article <1991Apr25.033637.15092@leland.Stanford.EDU> fangchin@elaine54.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) writes: >I believe many people would enjoy the chance of looking at kernel >disk file sizes. Below I give three (vm)unix file sizes: > >RS6000 supersalar -> multiple instructions per clock, in the case of > IBM, the number is 4 > 1271128 bytes > >SUN OS 4.1.1 on SPARC -> derivative of Berkeley RISC > > 1303014 bytes > >Ultrix 4.1 on MIPS 5500 (DEC System 5500, Stanford MIPS project decendent) > > 3375632 bytes One thing to keep in mind also, is the fact that RISC compiled objects are generally larger than their CISC counterparts would be. Makes good sense to me, since there are fewer instructions for the compiler implementer to use, his code sequences will generally require more of them. I don't have any hard figures available at the moment. I'm sure that I could come up with some if the need arose. I recall figures of approx. 30% in some of the recent literature that I have read. Terry Terry Jones {rutgers,uunet}!acsu.buffalo.edu!jones SUNY at Buffalo ECE Dept. or: rutgers!ub!jones, jones@acsu.buffalo.edu
torek@elf.ee.lbl.gov (Chris Torek) (04/25/91)
(now why did we have `Keywords: init run level'?) This discussion belongs elsewhere. comp.arch would be the place to argue over what makes something a `RISC' (it will only be the 17 million'th time the argument has gone on there). In article <1991Apr25.033637.15092@leland.Stanford.EDU> fangchin@elaine54.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) writes: >A good book on this is Profs. John Hennessy and David Patterson's Computer >Archetectures. Yes. Nowadays, however, you also must be aware that `RISC' is a marketing word, with zero meaning. The marketeers believe that customers think `RISC = good', so the marketeers label everything `RISC'. (Well, almost everything. `RISC dinner plates, now on sale...' :-) ) >I believe many people would enjoy the chance of looking at kernel >disk file sizes. Below I give three (vm)unix file sizes ... These sizes are almost meaningless, because the size of the file tells little about the size of the kernel. In particular, the MIPS executable file format typically contains two to three times as much symbol table information (`for debuggers' is an oversimplification, but close enough here) as some other typical formats. For another unfair comparison (slightly more fair than raw file size), use the `size' program: % size /vmunix sys/compile/ss1/vmunix text data bss dec hex 868352 118000 79392 1065744 104310 /vmunix 483328 38664 124416 646408 9dd08 sys/compile/ss1/vmunix /vmunix is SunOS 4.1, sys/compile/ss1/vmunix is my kernel. Mine has almost no device drivers, and is 4BSD rather than SunOS. I am hoping it will shrink when I get around to cleaning some things up.... -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Lawrence Berkeley Lab CSE/EE (+1 415 486 5427) Berkeley, CA Domain: torek@ee.lbl.gov
rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Robert Bernecky) (04/26/91)
In article <1991Apr24.224650.27937@sol.UVic.CA> jtice@arlo.UVic.CA (Jason W. Tice) writes: >Any information regarding the RISC and CISC chips would be greatly appreciated. > >What does it do? >what are it's parametres? >what is the difference between RISC and CISC ? >can you tell me where to look to find more information on them? Hennessy (of MIPS and Stanford) and Patteron have an EXCELLENT book which covers this topic in enough detail that you too can become a computer designer! (Of course, you may not end up being a very good one, but that's a separate problem). The book is: Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach. It came out last year and should be available in any good university textbook store. If not, grump. This book is THE one to read to understand why RISC machines have an edge over traditional CISC machines. Robert Bernecky rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.com bernecky@itrchq.itrc.on.ca Snake Island Research Inc (416) 368-6944 FAX: (416) 360-4694 18 Fifth Street, Ward's Island Toronto, Ontario M5J 2B9 Canada