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Re: SUN vs Lisp machine hardware differences?



    Date: 11 Aug 87 17:45:32 PDT (Tue)
    From: spar!malcolm@decwrl.dec.com

	    From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@ALDERAAN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
	    Subject: Re: SUN vs Lisp machine hardware differences? 
	    To: larus%paris.Berkeley.EDU@berkeley.edu

		Date: Tue, 11 Aug 87 13:54:26 PDT
		From: larus%paris.Berkeley.EDU@berkeley.edu (James Larus)

		Even parallel checks of this sort have costs.  To name two:

		1. Extra hardware that costs money and limits the basic cycle of 
		the machine.

	    The extra hardware to do these checks is really tiny.  Since it's
	    operating in parallel with normal operation anyway, it doesn't really
	    limit the cycle time of the machine.
    You can't say that it doesn't impact the cycle time of the machine.  At some
    point the result of the parallel computation must be folded back into the 
    main flow of the instruction.  At the very least this means that the gate that
    decides whether the instruction fails must have one extra input and is going 
    to be just a little bit slower.  This is a basic tenet of RISC.

    Admittedly the extra time is small but they all add up.  

The question is: is the extra time spent in type-checking in hardware
smaller than the extra time which would otherwise have to be spent in
software?  We believe so.  Having such type-checking in hardware also
eliminate the temptation to remove type-checking in "production quality"
software, which is the one place where you really want to have it.

    No, I don't think it is necessary to open up the RISC vs CISC debate again.

I hope not.

		2. Extra design time that could be spent elsewhere (e.g., speeding 
		up the basic cycle) and that delays time-to-market.

	    Theoretically, yes, but it's pretty small also.  Consider that 
	    Symbolics just designed a chip that has more transistors than the 
	    Intel 386, but did it with one-tenth the personpower.  Compared to 
	    this, the time needed to design the extra checking hardware is peanuts.

    This isn't a meaningful comparison.  Intel has become big enough that they are
    trying to design one piece of silicon that does everything.

    Besides, last week somebody at Symbolics was claiming that your software 
    tools (and single address space) were responsible for the incredible 
    productivity of your chip designers.  I've always liked your software 
    enviroment much better than your hardware; I'm more likely to believe the 
    tools were responsible for the quick design time then the "clean" 
    architecture.

It's not that the architecture is "clean", it's that it does a few
things for us which makes writing our environment software much simpler.