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Intel considering making new CPUs 64 bit only

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james_s:

--- Quote from: brucehoult on May 25, 2023, 07:49:31 am ---
--- Quote from: james_s on May 25, 2023, 05:54:44 am ---
--- Quote from: brucehoult on May 25, 2023, 01:52:59 am ---CISC or RISC is a property of instruction sets, not of CPUs.

--- End quote ---

This is being rather pedantic.

--- End quote ---

You mean "precise".  The ISA is the most important interface in a computer -- it is how the programmer speaks to and instructs the hardware.


--- Quote ---It is perfectly valid to refer to a "RISC CPU", it means "a CPU that has a reduced instruction set.

--- End quote ---

Which still makes the instruction set primary.

By corollary , a "CISC CPU" is a CPU that has a CISC instruction set.

And by extension "a computer that 'has a CISC instruction set' does not 'have RISC underneath'."

--- End quote ---

I still say it's pedantic.

The whole RISC vs CISC thing is largely irrelevant today anyway. Traditionally CISC processors have adopted techniques pioneered by RISC processors, while RISC processors have become more complex. Where exactly is the boundary between RISC and CISC anymore? I don't think it's clear cut. Certainly not anything like it used to be. Most software developers today don't directly touch the hardware, they don't care about the instruction set. The entire platform my company builds is written in Python and Javascript.

SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: james_s on May 27, 2023, 12:49:32 am ---The entire platform my company builds is written in Python and Javascript.

--- End quote ---

Condolences. ;D

brucehoult:

--- Quote from: james_s on May 27, 2023, 12:49:32 am ---I still say it's pedantic.

--- End quote ---

Engineers are required to be pedantic, in order that bridges and planes don't fall down.


--- Quote ---The whole RISC vs CISC thing is largely irrelevant today anyway. Traditionally CISC processors have adopted techniques pioneered by RISC processors, while RISC processors have become more complex. Where exactly is the boundary between RISC and CISC anymore? I don't think it's clear cut. Certainly not anything like it used to be.

--- End quote ---

Repetition is not proof.


--- Quote ---Most software developers today don't directly touch the hardware, they don't care about the instruction set. The entire platform my company builds is written in Python and Javascript.

--- End quote ---

You're quite right that most developers, let alone users, don't have any reason to care about the instruction set, as long as their computer is fast enough.

That is why it doesn't matter that your opinions are wrong. You're not the one designing the bridges and planes.

It matters a lot to the people writing the JIT your Javascript requires to run at decent performance.

David Hess:

--- Quote from: brucehoult on May 27, 2023, 01:31:27 am ---You're quite right that most developers, let alone users, don't have any reason to care about the instruction set, as long as their computer is fast enough.

That is why it doesn't matter that your opinions are wrong. You're not the one designing the bridges and planes.

It matters a lot to the people writing the JIT your Javascript requires to run at decent performance.
--- End quote ---

Linus Torvalds has talked about that in the past.  The ironic thing is that some aspects of available RISC designs, like relaxed memory ordering and paging, make them *slower* than x86 in those sorts of applications.  Operating systems like MacOS have the same problems compared to Linux and sometimes even Windows.

The rare cases which RISC processors decline to handle can have large effects on performance in practical systems.  Some operations are just better handled in hardware.

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