Re: Legacy code in scientific computing
Code generation for a RISC machine is easier too since you don't have to worry all of the funny non orthogonal instructions.
This was one part of the RISC v. CISC argument I never really got. Having written an x86 code generator for a C compiler back in the mid 80's, there weren't that many non-orthogonal instructions you had to worry about. However, if you were generating code for an ICL 1900, VAX etc. ie. the previous generation of computers where you did stuff to squeeze the maximum performance out of the system and minimised the wasteful use of memory, then the situation is a little different.
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