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4/ This became known as "Reduced Instruction Set Computing" or RISC. It was quite counter-intuitive and def ran up against Intel. The raging debate was RISC v CISC. In grad school we spent hours in classes debating this.
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5/ First everyone read the now famous Patterson and Ditzel paper "The Case for the Reduced Instruction Set Computer" going back to 1980. Now there was a company starting to seed chips to leading companies called MIPS that was "interesting".
The Case for the
Reduced Instruction Set Computer
David A. Patterson
Computer Science Division University of California Berkeley, California 94720
David R. Ditzel
Bell Laboratories Computing Science Research Center Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
One of the primary goals of computer architects is to design computers that are more cost- effective than their predecessors. Cost-effectiveness includes the cost of hardware to manufacture the machine, the cost of programming, and costs incurred related to the architecture in debugging both the initial hardware and subsequent programs. If we review the history of computer families we find that the most common architectural change is the trend toward ever more complex machines. Presumably this additional complexity has a positive tradeoff with regard to the cost- effectiveness of newer models. In this paper we propose that this trend is not always cost-effective, and in fact, may even do more harm than good. We shall examine the case for a Reduc
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6/ With all the excitement and still many companies making "workstations" the debate began to rage. Leading mini computer vendor, DEC, was all up in arms as VAX was big time CISC. So they wrote -- "Comments on "The Case for..." in what today would prob be a HN thread w/1M votes.
 Comments on "The Case for the Reduced Instruction Set Computer," by Patterson and Ditzel
Douglas W. Clark and William D. Strecker
Patterson and Instruction Set
VAX Systems Architecture Digital Equipment Corporation
1925 Andover Street Tewksbury, MA 01876
September 1980
Ditzel's paper [3] argues
Computer (RISC) can be as cost-effective as a
Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC). In this note we suggest that several of their points are misleading, and present some evidence on the other side of the argument. We rely heavily, as did they, on the VAX-iI architecture [5] for examples.
The superiority of a RISC over a corresponding CISC will be very difficult to prove. Casual evaluation of cost and performance will not be sufficient unless the differences between a CISC and a RISC are extreme, which is unlikely. Paper designs will not be enough. A careful comparison between a RISC and a CISC would seem to us to require a complete design of the hardware and microcode for both, construction
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7/ Debate raged for a very long time. MIPS worked to make inroads but PC + Intel caused the mini computer and workstation markets to eventually collapse though RISC hung on with IBM Workstations and also markets like printers. But it was so elegant!! Even did Windows NT for MIPS.
Windows NT for MIPS
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8/ This was a big deal at Microsoft because we were 100% Intel. It was a core bet for NT...curious that the NT team also came from DEC/VAX world. :-) It also sowed the seeds for NT being cross platform "proven" early on.
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10/ In 1984, really early, John then at BYTE Magazine did an *incredibly* deep dive into MIPS from his perch in Silicon Valley. I am pretty sure this is the first RISC "explainer" outside of academia. It had benchmarks! All pages here from Nov 1984 "Chip Issue"
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12/ Also in that issue - the 286 was new. Bill Gates called the chip "brain dead." Microsoft had a heck of time making Windows work well on it (did 286 & 386 versions). IBM+MS really got gummed up w/OS/2 as IBM forced 286 support. PC AT came out in 1985 and all the clones on 286.
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13/ RISC v. CISC continued literally for decades. RISC turned into ARM and the whole world of billions of embedded chips. The economics and customization enabled by the business model worked well for devices that could not carry royalties. Then came phones! Then the iPod!
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14/ The rest is history. Anyway, wanted to share wonderful BYTE article & debate that raged for decades. Eventually the inventors were proven right and won the Turing award. The arc of innovation is often much longer than we perceive. (Also "Comments on…" always gets me) // END
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