Re: lisp machines vs. lisp on other boxes

[Scott McKay <SWM@sapsucker.scrc.symbolics.com>]

    Date: Thu, 28 May 87 09:46:32 PDT
    From: larus%paris.Berkeley.EDU@berkeley.edu (James Larus)

    Rather than phrasing Symbolic's problem as a RISC vs. CISC debate, I
    would ask whether a small company like Symbolics selling to a small
    market has the resources to build a special purpose machine with
    enough performance advantages to stay ahead of the 'stock' hardware
    vendors like Motorola, AMD, and Sun?

Well, a better question might be to ask whether "stock" hardware has
enough horsepower to run the Symbolics software.  Here, we think not.
In large part, it is our so-called "special purpose" hardware which
gives our software a decisive edge over companies like Sun.

By the way, I would call processors like 80386's "special purpose",
because they can only handle numbers well!  :-) 

BBTW, that companies like Sun are doing so well is a fair indication
that it is not entirely clear that our market is "small".