Ferrous Moon http://www.ferrousmoon.com:80/forums/ |
|
RISC vs CISC Architecture http://www.ferrousmoon.com:80/forums/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=2550 |
Page 1 of 1 |
Author: | eddieringle [Wed Aug 10, 2011 3:17 pm ] |
Post subject: | RISC vs CISC Architecture |
I've heard from both sides on the matter, but I'd like to see all the arguments in one centralized place (here). Here's what I've heard:
|
Author: | FinalWarrior [Wed Aug 10, 2011 11:46 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: RISC vs CISC Architecture |
Linked this thread to one of my roommates; here's the chatlog. Me: Interesting question, outside the scope of my knowledge. Him: Yes? M: Your thoughts? H: If you build a button for every possible thing your machine can do, you have a freaking lot of buttons vs. having comboes of buttons for doing things. H: Freaking lots of buttons means you can just look for the button you want. H: Second one needs a manual to find out which combo for what, since it's inobvious. H: In the end, same result, it depends on the scope of your project, as you can see, the tradeoff is mainly in how expandable stuff is. H: Either way, doing anything complicated is going to require lotsa buttons. H: If you try to make a button for every possible action, this is obviously unfeasible, yeah? So you'll start to build on top of existing buttons. H: So everything converges to that point at the high level. H: aka, this argument is stupid. H: Really, once you're actually doing high level work, you're writing programs, right? H: And programs are sequences or combinations of instructions, therefore, you're doing at a high level what RISC processors do at a low level. H: What it comes down to is at where it's acceptable. H: Sometimes if you code a function into hardware it can be done faster, and it's worth it. H: Sometimes, the function is so obscure that why bother? Just do it as a compilation of instructions. H: So, if you're running like, machinery that has very few possible stuff it'll ever need, it might be feasible to have good coverage in hardware. H: But this also means your hardware is very specialized for that machinery --- not generally usable for things outside of it. H: Is this level of performance required? Well, that's of course up to the designer to decide, yes? H: That's really what it boils down to. H: Super simplistic view, but I think it covers the main issue. H: Besides, from a "let's step back and look" view, the two systems aren't completely opposites. H: you can have a basic instruction set for building programs from and then having specialized hardware for specific tasks if they're particularly important. Gee, I wonder what that sounds like? M: Iono, a computer? :v H: Indeed. H: Which is why this argument is silly. (I was planning on posting up through "aka", but then he said more stuff that I thought would be relevant/edifying.) -- Griffinhart |
Page 1 of 1 | All times are UTC-05:00 |
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group http://www.phpbb.com/ |