Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

The use of Higher-Order Languages as a programming tool tends to reduce the development cost of Software. However, there is a penalty in memory space and execution time that must be paid for the use of HOLs. In spite of the falling cost of computer hardware, there are now, and will continue to be, a significant set of computer applications where the penalty in hardware cost exceeds the Software cost savings associated th the us of HOLs. For such applications there is an economic justification for coding in Assembly language.

The tradeoff between HOL Assembly-level coding depends primarily on the number of systems being developed for the particular application. The breakeven point is dependent on the hardware technology, the compiler available, and the size and speed requirements for the application. For any combination of parameters, there is always some breakeven point beyond which Assembly-level coding gives minimum cost.