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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.A32.3.90.941007154447.16592P-100000@swim5.eng.sematech.org> <CxIqrL.2z6@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <Pine.A32.3.90.941011133338.19404B-100000@swim5.eng.sematech.org>
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 1994 18:39:52 GMT
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In article <Pine.A32.3.90.941011133338.19404B-100000@swim5.eng.sematech.org> "William D. Gooch" <goochb@swim5.eng.sematech.org> writes:
>On Tue, 11 Oct 1994, Jeff Dalton wrote:
>
>> .... 
>> But specialized hardware was *a* mistake because ordinary hardware
>> often worked just as well or better.  Consider Lingo, the language
>> for the Rekursiv.  An implementation on a not very fast Sun was
>> faster than the one on the specialized machine.  Or consider what
>> happened to the early-80s trend towards microcoding once RISC came
>> along.  Specialized machines are CISC++, so to speak.
>> 
>> Non-specialized machines were cheaper and faster as well as supporting
>> a wider range of software....
>
>The latter is of course generally correct, but I disagree with the 
>assertion that stock hardware is/was cheaper and faster for doing 
>Lisp work than Lisp machines.  When Lisp machines were first created, 
>they were faster than anything available for doing Lisp (early 3600s 
>benchmarked very favorably relative to DEC20s, which were still fairly 
>commonly used for Lisp at that time.  Sun had yet to offer a 
>reasonably-priced system in those days.)
>
>Price/performance has improved markedly since then.  Nowadays, you could 
>probably get a used Symbolics XL1200 for around $10k or less, and even when 
>they were newer they were cost-competetive with Unixes.

I assume that some specialized machines were faster than the
alternatives, because otherwise the idea that specialized machines
were the right way to go wouldn't have lasted as long as it did.
Symbolics machines may well have been among these faster machines.

Indeed, I did use a Symbolics a bit at a time when it was faster
for Lisp than Lucid CL on whatever Sun I had access too.  But
storage management (and other things) got a lot better in Lucid
after that.

But for how long could specialized/specially-microcoded machines
continue to be faster than the alternatives?  The value of a used
Symbolics these days is not really a fair measure.

-- jeff


