Analysis of CISC versus RISC microprocessors for FDDI network interfaces

In recent years, RISC manufacturers have focussed attention on the enhanced performance of RISC microprocessors in meeting high speed microprocessor requirements. FDDI has such needs at the network to host computer interface. This paper presents design alternatives for the network interface and a model that can be used to examine the achievable throughput assuming different CISC and RISC processors. The model indicates that the CISC processors may outperform the RISC processors in FDDI and other high speed networks where data movement requirements are significantly larger than the protocol processing overhead.<>