Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 10:13:23 +0100 (BST) From: Stephen Roome <steve@visint.co.uk> To: Mike <mike@ns1.seidata.com> Cc: Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: talk (fwd) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980520095640.2602A-100000@dylan.visint.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980519111332.24546C-100000@ns1.seidata.com>
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On Tue, 19 May 1998, Mike wrote: > *laff* The StrongARM is a 'souped up' RISC processor, right? Didn't they > basically take a RISC chip, strip out a few select instructions (modified > to run at super-low power) and add lots of cache? The now discontinued > Apple Message Pad 2100 used the ARM at ~200MHz, I believe. Impressive. > > I've always heard (I have no motorola experience, yet) that motorola asm > blows x86 away when it comes to efficiency. A friend I have develops for > Be and he's always ranting about it. :) I think that the StrongARM has 14 general pupose 32 bit registers, unless they removed a few of them since I was programming with the much older ARM 2. (Maybe the ARM3 as well, but I was never really bothered with numbers on chips then.) The StrongARM is supposedly compatible with older ARM code so I guess that it probably has either 14 or more registers. Have a look at www.arm.com, there's some more information there I beleive. Personally, my experience with ARM code (some years ago now) would have me buying ARM based machines and porting stuff to them. However they discontinued the Archimedes range (although it was years ahead of the PC in performance ?!) and there's not been anything else for a while. Apart from the RiscPC, which was a tad expensive at the time. > > [It still amazes me that there are so many better options than Intel and > > no-one ever uses them, writing ARM is a damn sight easier than 80x86 > > Likewise, it always amazes me that there are so many better options than > M$ and very few utilize them. Personally, I'm always interested in new > ideas/ports/processes. Anything to work toward a 'bigger/badder/better' > future. ;) Yes, but at least OS/2 was given a chance, it got reviews, it even got some good reviews, some people use x86 Solaris in the business world, there's at least a Linux column or a bit of Linux speak in almost every PC magazine every month. SCO for the x86 probably gets used a bit. People use Mac's and the same applies for them. There's probably some CAD people who buy Sun, and some Video folks who wouldn't want anything but an SGI. However I've not really heard anything about the ARM range for years apart from it's use in embedded systems. Surprisingly though it's got incredibly simple asm, it's high performance and it's cheap. Maybe also it was originally British, which doesn't get you anywhere in the computer business now does it? =( Steve Steve Roome - Vision Interactive Ltd. Tel:+44(0)117 9730597 Home:+44(0)976 241342 WWW: http://dylan.visint.co.uk/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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