According to the folks at Ars Technica (www.arstechnica.com), this debate is dead, because there is no such thing as a pure RISC or pure CISC chip any longer -- both technologies have converged, taken the best of each design philosophy, to the point where the differences are so slight that they are far outweighted by the similarities. Dave On Thursday 17 May 2001 20:54, thus spake Matt Waters: > Me and a friend of mine are in the middle of a debate and were > wondering if you guys could help settle it. > > When one of you guys put your SGI Indy up for sale, I told my friend > about it, and we began arguing over the power of a risc processer. He > argues that because of a risc's limited instruction set, a risc is > slower than a comperable x86 because it requires more intructions to > accomplish a task. I argue that risc's have more bang per computational > cycle, because the instructions they use take up fewer clock cycles, and > fewer instructions means the cpu can transmit data more quickly. Plus, > the 64-bit bus allows the cpu to handle data more efficiently. (My > friend claims that PIIs and up use 128-bit buses with 32-bit > compatibility mode.) > > I admit, my hardware skills aren't nearly where they should be, so > please don't ream me out too badly if I am suffering from severe > rectal-cranial inversion. =) > > ---------- > The Fishy One's Infinite Wisdom #15: "A man doesn't need a scarecrow if > he's got penguins." > > New wisdom every week! > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > tclug-list mailing list > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -- "...[W]e preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." (1 Cor 1:23-24)