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I cannot see what benefit a fragmented processor instruction set market would bring to anyone. It was more fragmented in the past and as far as I can tell not m

I cannot see what benefit a fragmented processor instruction set market would bring to anyone. It was more fragmented in the past and as far as I can tell not much was different then except that even fewer programs could run cross platform or virtualized.

crc32 17y ago
It could be good under the assumption that other technology - compilers, virtual machines, virtualisation, web apps - has moved on to the extent that a wider variety of instruction sets could bring benefits rather than problems.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  One could add that many of the compiler advancements happened to counterbalance binary architecture limitations. Contrast aggressive register optimization for function calling on most RISC boxes with SPARC's moving register window or the hoops you have to jump through on register-starved instruction sets like x86s.
rbanffy 17y ago
If we move away from a single binary architecture without compromising a software compatibility layer (that doesn't need to be at the binary executable boundary), we become free to experiment with other technologies that have not been explored for a couple decades now because they would not be compatible with our software. It's a little embarrassing the coolest processors we have today are more or less binary compatible with processors of the 70's and 80's and that the operating systems they run follow fashion that was conceived at that time. I have said it before: where are massively-parallel, hardware-assisted garbage-collecting connectionist machines of today? "Nowhere", we say, mostly because they can't run Windows. What happened to Alan Kay's "if you are serious about software you should build your own hardware" idea? And just imagine how happy would Intel and AMD's engineers if they could make all the silicon around the execution units of their processors do useful stuff instead of emulating past 8086's 80286's, 80386's, 80486's, and Pentium I, Pro, II, III, 4, MMX, SSE instructions (and quirks) for binary compatibility's sake.

crc32 17y ago

It could be good under the assumption that other technology - compilers, virtual machines, virtualisation, web apps - has moved on to the extent that a wider variety of instruction sets could bring benefits rather than problems.

rbanffy 17y ago
One could add that many of the compiler advancements happened to counterbalance binary architecture limitations. Contrast aggressive register optimization for function calling on most RISC boxes with SPARC's moving register window or the hoops you have to jump through on register-starved instruction sets like x86s.

rbanffy 17y ago

If we move away from a single binary architecture without compromising a software compatibility layer (that doesn't need to be at the binary executable boundary), we become free to experiment with other technologies that have not been explored for a couple decades now because they would not be compatible with our software. It's a little embarrassing the coolest processors we have today are more or less binary compatible with processors of the 70's and 80's and that the operating systems they run follow fashion that was conceived at that time. I have said it before: where are massively-parallel, hardware-assisted garbage-collecting connectionist machines of today? "Nowhere", we say, mostly because they can't run Windows. What happened to Alan Kay's "if you are serious about software you should build your own hardware" idea? And just imagine how happy would Intel and AMD's engineers if they could make all the silicon around the execution units of their processors do useful stuff instead of emulating past 8086's 80286's, 80386's, 80486's, and Pentium I, Pro, II, III, 4, MMX, SSE instructions (and quirks) for binary compatibility's sake.