A good book to read on the subject: computer architecture, a quantative
approach (hennessy/patterson). The main pitfall when taken design
descisions for granted that might have been correct decades ago is that
some figures change over time, like

- ratio on on-chip speed versus chip-to-chip speed
- ratio of CPU speed versus memory speed
- density (hence cost) of random logic versus memory
- density of various memory cells (volatile, static, non-volatile)

Some circumstances, like the need to be rad-hard, can resurrect a
once-interesting but now abandoned architecture like the single-stack
machine to be interesting again.

Wouter van Ooijen

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Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products

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