[cap-talk] Butler Lampson's upcoming talk

[Charles Forsyth]

> I was under the impression that RISC was well and truly alive.  Most of
> the newer (desktop/server) processor designs (i.e. PowerPC and Cell)
> seem to be basically RISC designs.  I also thought that most embedded
> processors were RISC as well, except maybe the really tiny ones.

have you seen the instruction set for the PowerPC?
it's load/operate/store, and indeed i quite like it compared to some,
but it is by no means `R'ISC.  Lampson is talking about the dreams of RISC taking
over the world, which was the original plan.  hence Power-PC,
but the -PC aspect never really happened.
have you seen the instruction set for the amd64?
that's the one we're visibly using.

>He also puts "distributed computing".
>He refers to the web later on,
>isn't that a big distributed computing environment?

no, not in the sense he means, for instance:
does the web (at large) use any of the work developed by distributed systems people?
hardly any (except internally and invisibly, as within Google).

you need to hear or read the full talk.