Focus on Portable Computing
Avid6eek said:
I would consider the CISC world to be ahead in terms of processor technology. Please explain your feeling a little more....just want to see where your coming from.
Theoretically, this is is a case where less is more. Rather than wasting time and energy processing complicated instruction sets it makes sense to save resources by processing only what is absolutely necessary. This has been the logic behind high-end servers for many years and is the logic for emerging information, wireless and high-speed internet technologies.
Perhaps I could have better separated my theoretical thoughts from my practical thoughts.
Theoretically I can see IT reaching a point where programs will become so complex and so much information will be available everywhere all the time that RISC or some derivitive will become a necessary standard for information processing. When this happens all the very complicated high tech CISC hardware will eventually be rendered useless, so while it may be very advanced and useful today ultimately CISC has a fatal flaw. This why I said that Apple and RISC are ahead of CISC OEM's. I was not referring to technological advance in terms of complexity as is the case with CISC today, I was referring to advance in terms of the simplicity, survival and evolution of the RISC design.
In practical terms I believe that today, RISC is the better approach for portable computing by design due to the special constraints, hazards and costs inherant to this type of computing.
In regards to home use desktop computing today, I too believe that CISC is currently more technologically advanced/complex and as we have not yet reached the above mentioned theoretical breaking point my own desktop computer is a custom built P4. Hence my avatar.
I hope this clarifies my comments.
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Edit: In simple terms, I believe each type of computing (e.g. home use, business server, portable computing) can benefit from either CISC or RISC architectures. My own choice is to use RISC for portable computing and high volume server functions and CISC for basic home computing.