Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!hplabs!cae780!leadsv!laic!nova!darin
From: darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: The VAX Always Uses Fewer Instructions
Keywords: VAX MIPS
Message-ID: <270@laic.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jun 88 16:40:04 GMT
References: <6921@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <28200161@urbsdc> <10595@sol.ARPA> <1277@basser.oz>
Sender: news@laic.UUCP
Lines: 20

In article <1277@basser.oz>, steve@basser.oz (Stephen Russell) writes:
> >In article <914@entropy.ms.washington.edu> mcglk@scott.biostat.washington.edu writes:
> >I'm kind of fond of the VAX instruction set, and you can do a heck
> >of a lot more with one line of its instruction set than you can with five
> >or ten lines of RISC code.
> 
> But is the single VAX instruction actually faster, all else being equal?

Perhaps it would be possible for someone to come up with an 'assembler-compiler'
that would accept a CISC instruction set and generate RISC code.  This would
allow one to write using something like 'ADD mem-loc1 to mem-loc2 and store
in mem-loc3(R1)' without having  write the 5 or 10 RISC lines of code.
The biggest drawback I can see, is that there would have to be 'optimizing
assemblers'.  Of course, such an assembler would find it difficult to 
take advantage of some common RISC idioms, such as register windows.

Just another naive thought from the mind of...
Darin Johnson (...pyramid.arpa!leadsv!laic!darin)
              (...ucbvax!sun!sunncal!leadsv!laic!darin)
	"All aboard the DOOMED express!"