On Thursday, Apr 15, 2004, at 12:31 US/Pacific, Shawn Wilton wrote:
>> I've been wondering the same thing.  Except, I'd also ask about the
>> Zilog chips?  Like the eZ80?  How do the Atmel, Microchip, and Zilog
>> chips compare?

> Honestly, they're all vastly different.  They're all RISC, but that's
> about where the comparison stops.
>
The EZ80 is a Z80 architecture, which I don't think anyone has been
calling RISC.  I don't really consider the Z8 or PICs to be RISC
systems either (the architectures predate the seminal RISC work, after
all, and they're lacking some of what I consider the important
concepts, like, say, memory, or "architected for compiler writers".)
They're not CISC either, really.  They're just controllers with rather
limited instruction sets. (LISC.  Not a bad concept as a new name,
perhaps.)
LISC machines have some of the nice features of RISC (like a HW
complexity level conducive to high clock speeds), but calling them RISC
machines is just marketing hoopla...

BillW

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