You may well wonder "What debate would that be?" Well, it was a big deal back in the olden days. Stan Kelly-Bootle reminded me of this in his April "Son of Devil's Advocate" at http://www.sarcheck.com/skb/. (His column used to appear on the very last page of UNIX Review magazine. It was usually the first thing to which I turned.)

His SODA column contains a "This column N years ago," padding the size of the column, even though he is no longer paid by the word. Old habits die hard. It was in this section that a reference to the RISC vs. CISC question appeared under the heading "RISC vs. CISC Commotion." In it, Stan said,

I urge you to read Nick Tredennick's five page Viewpoint called "It's Not RISC vs. CISC -- It's New vs. Old" in the February issue of Microprocessor Report, Vol 3 Number 2 ...