10 Aug
2018
10 Aug
'18
9:45 p.m.
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 11:13:48AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 10:43 AM, Larry McVoy
<lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I'm not sure who did the first SPARC, I'd guess TI, they did most of
the follow on designs. I know Fujitsu did some SPARC chips but I'm not
sure if that was solely for their own use or if Sun used those. But I
remember a lot of TI chips and TI was not speedy turning those around,
the hardware guys were under a lot of pressure to get it right the first
time (and I think that was rare).
My guess is cheaper as well.
Maybe -- TI was the fab right? Moto's fabs were pretty good, not as good
at Intel in those days. I never really thought much of the RISC chips, accept
maybe the by the time
of the MIPS 4400 series; but then again they were were designed for
compiler writers.
And the whole RISC thing was a bit of marketing.
Yeah, I tend to agree. But there was some wisdom in less is more, it was
easier to make the clocks go faster when the instructions are simple.