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"RISC architecture is going to change everything"


One of the most amusing quotes in the movies given how obvious the statement must have seemed at the time. Tanenbaum made a statement hinting at the same development in the famous usenet debate with Torvalds in 1992.

"Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5."


And they were right! Just 20 years too early.


No, no, RISC architecture was already changing everything. I mean, RISC made possible not only the Newton, but also the Alphas that shortly after that powered AltaVista, and the SGIs that powered significant parts of the US nuclear stockpile stewardship program (not to mention some movie visual effects). And arguably without the pressure from RISC we wouldn't have seen the adoption of OoO and the micro-op approach that was already starting to boost CISC performance when the movie came out.




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