[Gllug] The importance of the PC to free software (was Barbican website...)

[Pete Ryland]

On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 10:21:46AM +0000, Tethys wrote:
> Pete Ryland writes:
> >> Quite so. GCC still shows its architectural heritage as a compiler for
> >> CISC chips (m68k and SPARC).
> >
> >I guess you mean RISC.
> 
> It all depends on definitions. Commonly, the m68k is called a CISC chip,
> and SPARC is called RISC. But it all depends on how you define RISC and
> CISC. There's no hard and fast line which once crossed puts you in one
> camp or another. Just a set of vague properties, some of which may be
> true for any given chip. For example, SPARC has a fixed instruction
> width, and lack of addressing modes common among RISC chips, while
> m68k has the opposite. But even then, the line get blurred. The 68040,
> for example, has been described as a RISC implementation of a CISC
> architecture.
> 
> Tet (who still yearns for the good old days of 6502/6510)

If it's good enough for the Terminator, it's good enough for me!  Yep, good
old Arnie runs a 6510 if you watch it closely. :)

Pete

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