Alternative Architectures
Design alternative:
- provide more powerful operations
- goal is to reduce number of instructions executed
- danger is a slower cycle time and/or a higher CPI
Sometimes referred to as “RISC vs. CISC”
- virtually all new instruction sets since 1982 have been RISC
- VAX: minimize code size, make assembly language easy instructions from 1 to 54 bytes long!
We’ll look at PowerPC and 80x86