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Author here. Thanks for the comment and feedback. Really interesting point on MIPS vs RISC-I approaches. I was a bit puzzled by the IBM 801 comment as the seco
by klelatti 3y ago
Author here. Thanks for the comment and feedback. Really interesting point on MIPS vs RISC-I approaches.
I was a bit puzzled by the IBM 801 comment as the second para of the previous post mentions the 801 and links to an earlier post that is all about the 801. Was there something you think I missed in these earlier posts?
- gumby 3y ago> I was a bit puzzled by the IBM 801 That didn't show as a link when I read it (shows as a link on my current device). Apologies for the oversight; I edited my comment. The 801 was an insightful jump from then-current trends in processor design and that insight, to me, is what RISC is all about. There were lean and orthogonal instruction sets already (most notably, to me, the PDP-6/10 and Seymour Cray's work at CDC) but the central idea of offloading a lot of heavy lifting to the compiler (and recognizing Multics' insight of writing an OS in a HLL, pointing to a practically assembly-language free future) was groundbreaking, a kind of Special Relativity of computing.
- klelatti 3y agoHi thanks so much for editing the comment. Much appreciated. Completely agree with your succinct summary of the what RISC is all about and the 801's place in the story. I've heard others call Cray's CDC's computers the first RISC designs, which I don't think is quite right. Probably deserves a fuller explanation than I can manage here though!