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Remember the other Intel ISA that could be described by this slightly elided text from TFA? "This model had many ramifications for the hardware, but it also in
by jepler 8y ago
Remember the other Intel ISA that could be described by this slightly elided text from TFA? "This model had many ramifications for the hardware, but it also introduced a dangerous dependency on software: the hardware was implicitly dependent on system software (namely, the compiler) for efficient management[...]. As it happened, the needed compiler work was not done, and the Ada compiler as delivered was pessimal[...]. [T]his software failing was the greatest single inhibitor to performance"
- simcop2387 8y agoSounds a lot like Itanium and the original Xeon Phi architectures (Knights Corner and Knights Ferry). They were both very dependent on the compilers being smart enough to keep everything occupied constantly.
- wbl 8y agoComputers are for crunching numbers in the world they were aiming at.
- mjw1007 8y agoMaybe one lesson is just that hardware companies often radically underestimate how much effort will need putting into the complementary software. Compare the start of the touchscreen phone era: it looks to me like companies like Nokia lost to Apple primarily because they didn't have good enough software to go with the hardware. You can point fingers at how Nokia had three different platforms fighting with each other, but maybe that's just a symptom and the real cause was that the software side needed several times the resources it was given.