4 ms·
The point is that if modern computers had been based on that architecture, which was way, way more efficient for execution of high-level languages, today we'd h
by Hexstream 18y ago
The point is that if modern computers had been based on that architecture, which was way, way more efficient for execution of high-level languages, today we'd have perhaps the same speed in GHZ but we could do way more because the high-level languages wouldn't need to execute at a level so far removed from machine language.
Worrying about how much those machines costed at the time is like worrying about how much a GB of ram costed at the time.
- silentbicycle 18y agoI agree with your underlying point, I just think that it's a little deceptive to compare a modern, $750 computer's processor to a $100,000+ mainframe's without acknowledging that they were also designed with a very different budget. I was wondering about how much the processor itself influences things a few days ago while reading an interview with Charles Moore in which he described Forth-native processors, but I've done very little with any assembly languages directly, so it's kind of beyond my ken. (Most of what I know about different architectures has to do with porting C programs.)