3 ms·

There could be more ISAs than they have customers depending all on the needs in each case. But it's no big deal because everything targets GenAsm and the machin

by chubot 9y ago

There could be more ISAs than they have customers depending all on the needs in each case. But it's no big deal because everything targets GenAsm and the machine code differences will be specialized away Yeah so this is the point I'm quibbling with. I have no doubt it's technically possible. I'm saying that it will hinder adoption, and they're probably underestimating the diversity of software components that generate native code, and underestimating the cost of modifying all those components. Something like Xen succeeded because it designed up front to be a trivial modification to kernels -- i.e. paravirtualization. This sounds like a whole new architectural element. They're not only changing the interface between the CPU and the compiler; they're also changing the relationship between the kernel and the CPU (aside from there being a different ISA.) It's good to test assumptions, and I wish them luck. But after being somewhat excited about it, I feel it's just too ambitious. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

infogulch 9y ago
To be clear, I'm just a random that's been following the mill project for a while, so please don't take my answers as gospel. The mill is a new, novel, ISA, which will require compilers to support it as a target. There's no getting around that. But once the tooling is ready, typical programs written in high level languages like C (i.e. excluding inline assembly and architecture-specific assumptions) will be a compiler flag away from being able to distribute binaries that run on all mill chips. If it's the specializer you're concerned about, it's intended to be very transparent to the typical user, integrated into the system. Most users are completely unaware that a thing called the linker even exists, this should be similar. By the way, just building the spec (defines belt size, available instructions, etc) generates a fully functioning specializer for that machine. I'm pretty sure it does that today.

by chubot 9y ago

infogulch 9y ago

To be clear, I'm just a random that's been following the mill project for a while, so please don't take my answers as gospel. The mill is a new, novel, ISA, which will require compilers to support it as a target. There's no getting around that. But once the tooling is ready, typical programs written in high level languages like C (i.e. excluding inline assembly and architecture-specific assumptions) will be a compiler flag away from being able to distribute binaries that run on all mill chips. If it's the specializer you're concerned about, it's intended to be very transparent to the typical user, integrated into the system. Most users are completely unaware that a thing called the linker even exists, this should be similar. By the way, just building the spec (defines belt size, available instructions, etc) generates a fully functioning specializer for that machine. I'm pretty sure it does that today.