Why shame, I see no reason you should remember the length of opcodes, especially if you C. I just happened to do that table quite recently so I remembered that.

Back to the code density on 32-bit RISCs, it can also have a different reason: while on "slow" and "small" 8-bits a lot of people is willing to asm and squeese things down to the absolute minimum even in C, I believe at the moment one moves "upwards" to the 32-bitters he expects the luxury of freedom, not being bothered by speed and memories any more.

Last week my colleague run the classic Dhrystone benchmark on a Renesas (exHitachi) SH-class 32-bit RISC. He run it from the internal FLASH and external SDRAM; but when I asked him if he tried the internal SRAM, he told me it won't fit. The RAM is 32kB, and the test is only a couple of loops with some arithmetics... and, guess what, printf...

Jan Waclawek