VUPs to MIPS

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Thu Jan 8 20:26:44 1998

<I'm not that well up in modern processor design, but I've never heard of
<that definition. In fact the ARM becomes CISC by it, I think (?).

That was part of the mid 80s def, but by no means an exclusive item.

The ARM used more clocks but not many. The early defininition was simply
Reduced Instruction Set and raw speed to make up for it. A PDP-8 would
qualify in many respects as it has about the smallest useful instruction
set going. It's biggest feature is the lack of complexity that allowed
CPUs like the ARM and MIPS to be very fast as they were very simple
compared to say the 386, the result was the amount of silicon required
was less and production costs are lower. Some side effects of the smaller
die(fewer transistors) were improved testability, lower power and less
heat with attendant higher relibility. Most smaller RISC chips are 10s
of thousands of transistors compared to millions in most of the CISC
designs.

Allison
Received on Thu Jan 08 1998 - 20:26:44 GMT