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From: sasaki@harvard.ARPA (Marty Sasaki)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.arch
Subject: Re: RISC
Message-ID: <224@harvard.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 28-Jun-85 22:39:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: harvard.224
Posted: Fri Jun 28 22:39:29 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Jun-85 00:48:25 EDT
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Reply-To: sasaki@harvard.UUCP (Marty sasaki)
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Organization: Harvard Science Center
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Summary: 

This may be an increadibly stupid question, but I remember reading an
article (in CACM, I think) on RISC machines where most of the
instructions occupied a single byte of memory. Through cleverness,
something like 95% of all instructions executed occupied a single
byte (including operands). This meant that programs would be smaller
and would run faster by the simple fact that they required fewer
memory references to get work done.

All of the recent discussion on RISC machines hasn't mentioned this at
all. Have things changed sufficiently in the recent past that this
small program size doesn't matter? Is this a really dumb question?

-- 
----------------
  Marty Sasaki				net:   sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp}
  Havard University Science Center	phone: 617-495-1270
  One Oxford Street
  Cambridge, MA 02138