Mac vs. PC
Out of context: Reply #47
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- fate0
pkny, you're a comp sci major and you think the RISC vs. CISC arguement still exists? hah.
Most modern CPU architecture is a balance of features of CISC and RISC. You will not find a chip that is even CLOSE to purely one or the other. The arguement isn't even relevant today.
Your CISC vs. RISC analysis is also way off base. The RISC vs. CISC debacle spawned out of the needs for efficiency and speed in the late 60's early 70's. Developers needed to close the gap between cheap hardware and expensive Software development in fear of an impending "crisis" caused by such high-costs.
CISC was about simplifying instruction sets at the processor level to move some of the complexity out of programming and put more weight onto the Processor.
RISC was about reversing this trend to some degree after the "crisis" never really hit, though intelligently, by pipelining microcode, reducing un-needed code and working to reduce cycle time.
The debate is an old one of balancing the power of a computer between software and hardware which only lives on in specific details of processor features. Most PC's and Mac's have plenty of RISC and CISC implementations. It'd be silly not to.