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From: marmar@mtk.UUCP (Mark Martino)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Cost of Forth Chips
Summary: Simpler should be cheaper
Message-ID: <893@mtk.UUCP>
Date: 15 Aug 89 17:29:19 GMT
Reply-To: marmar@mtk.UUCP (Mark Martino)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Mannesmann Tally, Kent, WA 98032
Lines: 25

I was reading an article by Brian Case in the August issue of "Microprocessor
Report".  He brought up two issues that bugged me a little.  I was
wondering what the rest of you think about his ideas.

After a fairly even-handed comparison of Forth chips versus RISC chips
(with a slight bias towards non-Forth languages), he asserts that
using a Forth based system will end up being about as expensive as a RISC based system.  I found it hard to disagree with him, even though I would like to
use Forth and Forth chips.

This reminded me of a question for which I still do not have an answer.
Why are the RTX2000 and the SC32 more expensive than RISC chips?  Despite
the economies of large volume production, I thought that implementing Forth
in silicon would be relatively cheap since it takes comparatively fewer
gates than previous architectures. I realize everyone likes to make up their
R & D costs, but both of these chips had a lot of their design work done
before their current developers implemented them.

The second issue has to do with the near future of Forth chips. In the last
few paragraphs Brian concludes that in order to operate at clock rates greater
than the current 10-12 MHZ, Forth chips will have to fall back to using
pipelining as do RISC chips.  He then says that Forth chips will look very
much like RISC chips anyway.  Will this really be necessary?

Has anyone else seen this article?  What do you think about his
arguements?