Re: faster strcpy()

Vojtech Pavlik (vojtech-lists@twilight.ucw.cz)
Sun, 26 Apr 1998 18:44:54 +0200

On Sat, Apr 25, 1998 at 06:11:53PM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> Alexander Kjeldaas <astor@guardian.no> writes:
> > inlined 'mov' instructions. This was not done for the pentium which as
> > a much simpler "RISC"-like internal design.
>
> The Pentium indeed has a much simpler design. But RISC-like, no. Not even
> between a handful of quotes. A "RISC-like" internal design cannot exist since
> RISC refers to a style of instruction sets and has nothing whatsoever to do
> with any implementation style.

The term "RISC-like internal design" makes sense. I'm not completely sure about
how the Pentium looks inside, but for example the NexGen 586, (and this applies
to K6, too, but not to Cyrixes) was completely RISC inside - breaking up the
x86 instructions into RISC code and then executing the RISC instructions. It
could be even switched to RISC-only mode that'd fetch the RISC instructions
from memory directly without the x86->RISC translation.

If the Pentium follows a similar design, which it supposedly does, then I
think it can be called a "RISC-like internal design".

Vojtech Pavlik

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