Clang: the thought behind Apple's insistence upon Xcode

[Paul D. DeRocco]

> From: Douglas
>
> The iPad uses an ARM processor, not a G4.
> The ARM chips were first utilised in the Acorn Archimedes computer range.
> They were designed by a partnership of Acorn Risc Machines (ARM),
> Motorola and IBM.
> The instruction set is very compact, therefore easy to learn. Most
> coders built up libraries of standard routines quickly and easily.
> I assume that they have not really seen any need for any massive
> increase in the instruction set, but I haven't seen anything about them
> for quite some number of years, so I really don't know.
> Multi-core ARM's now, that would be something else - I predict that may
> be in Apple's future.

I wouldn't call the ARM's native instruction set "compact". It's actually
fairly space-inefficient, which is why they later invented the Thumb
instruction set for the ARM7 processor. It gives up some of the complete
orthogonality of the ARM instructions for better code density.

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Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco at ix.netcom.com