[bf1942] Sparc

Stan Hoeppner Stan at hardwarefreak.com
Tue Jun 3 03:25:24 EDT 2003


 
> I stand corrected. Still, the big argument for RISC was that 
> the simpler 
> atomic instructions could be executed with a faster clock, 
> allowing the 
> same amount of work to happen in the same amount of time on a 
> simpler and 
> cooler-running CPU.

Absolutely.  And for a very long time, all the RISC chips outperformed x86
and 680x0.  IMHO, RISC has been very successful.  There were two minor
downsides:  application binaries were somewhat larger, requiring more
storage space (RAM & disk), and the overall system bus architectures needed
to be somewhat faster than the CISC designs in order to get the larger
volume of smaller/simpler instructions into the CPU.  With the debut of the
NextGen Nx586, then the Pentium Pro (and now all the x86 CPUs, except
Cyrix/VIA possibly), we got CISC CPUs with RISC cores.  So today, we have
the best of both worlds:  the somewhat more svelt code of CISC with the
performance of RISC.
 
> BTW, for x86, DJNZ is done with a LOOP instruction, possibly with a 
> condition code modifier. "LOOP" means "decrement CX and loop 
> while CX is 
> not zero". (ECX for 32 bit code, CX for 16 bit.) I think 
> "DJNZ" is the 
> mnemonic for 68000 and Z80 processors.

Heheh, apparently you have quite a bit more experience with assembly than I
do.  You're absolutely correct on DJNZ.  I took an assembly course back in
... 1986.  It was 8080/Z80 assembly.  DJNZ is an 8080 instruction.  The Z80
used the 8080 instruction set, but was a faster clocked part from Zylog, the
8080 being an Intel part.  The machines were Radio Shack TRS-80 (trash 80)
model IIIs.  And, coincidentally, ALL binaries were *small* back then. ;)

> The ADI SHARC (a VLIW DSP) uses a "zero-overhead" loop system 
> in which a 
> setup instruction loads helper registers with the loop count and last 
> instruction of the loop. When the instruction pointer hits the last 
> address, it automatically decrements the counter and jumps to the 
> instruction following the setup instruction, in parallel with 
> the last 
> instruction, effectively taking zero cycles. The counter and 
> jump address 
> are hardware stacks, allowing a small degree of loop nesting.

Interesting, and efficient, as I guess DSPs really need to be.

StanTheMan
TheHardwareFreak
stan at hardwarefreak.com



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