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From: ken@turtlevax.UUCP (Ken Turkowski)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.arch
Subject: Re: RISC
Message-ID: <794@turtlevax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Jun-85 16:53:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: turtleva.794
Posted: Wed Jun 26 16:53:37 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Jun-85 00:41:51 EDT
References: <639@vax2.fluke.UUCP> <2743@nsc.UUCP> <576@terak.UUCP> <5690@utzoo.UUCP> <1109@peora.UUCP> <5716@utzoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@turtlevax.UUCP (Ken Turkowski)
Organization: CADLINC, Inc. @ Menlo Park, CA
Lines: 27
Xref: watmath net.micro.68k:969 net.arch:1491
Summary: 

>>> Also, multiplies are actually fairly infrequent operations in most programs.
>> 
>> That is, if "most programs" don't use multidimensional arrays...
>
>Except in a few specific environments, most programs indeed do not use
>multidimensional arrays.

Depending on what your product is, you may not need multiplication at
all.  If the end product is a UN*X machine, most UN*X utilities do not
need multiplications.  However, if you are running any engineering or
scientific applications, the time devoted to multiplication is
considerable, and may even dominate execution time if there is no
hardware support for it.

Saving the status register is an infrequent operation; why not do
multiple conditional branches instead?  Virtually no application
programs need it at all.  The operating system just needs it to switch
contexts, which is a task done infrequently, and takes so much time as
it is... :-)
-- 

Ken Turkowski @ CADLINC, Menlo Park, CA
UUCP: {amd,decwrl,hplabs,nsc,seismo,spar}!turtlevax!ken
ARPA: turtlevax!ken@DECWRL.ARPA

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