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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Why do people like C? (Was: Comparison: Beta - Lisp)
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References: <Pine.A32.3.91.941018090811.17296C-100000@swim5.eng.sematech.org>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 20:12:52 GMT
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In article <Pine.A32.3.91.941018090811.17296C-100000@swim5.eng.sematech.org> "William D. Gooch" <goochb@swim5.eng.sematech.org> writes:
>On Mon, 17 Oct 1994, Jeff Dalton wrote:
>
>> ...
>> But for how long could specialized/specially-microcoded machines
>> continue to be faster than the alternatives?
>
>For as long as someone is willing to put a small fraction of the effort 
>into making the chips go faster as they do for stock chips.  Lisp 
>hardware has not been pushed anywhere near as far up the performance 
>curve as it can be.  

The specialized / micorcoded machines should do worse than CISC
machines against RISC.  Many of the same factors are involved.
I have no doubt that a simple (in the RISC sense) and fast Lisp
machine could be developed.  But that isn't what people were doing
in the early 80s when microcode was all the rage.

>>  The value of a used Symbolics these days is not really a fair measure.
>
>As I said, these machines were quite price/performance competetive when 
>they were new.

And then?

-- jeff
