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Modern CPUs are more like VMs. The actual architecture is totally different from x86 and just pretending to be x86 to the outside world. X86 instructions get tr
by iforgotpassword 7y ago
Modern CPUs are more like VMs. The actual architecture is totally different from x86 and just pretending to be x86 to the outside world. X86 instructions get translated to the native instruction set of the CPU which is more or less "secret". This makes it very easy to patch issues with the CPU through microcode, as seen in this case.
- nwallin 7y agoI would go so far as to say that modern CPUs are emulators, not even VMs. Something like 20% of the die area is devoted to instruction decoding. It's the only reason I'm interested in RISC-V or advanced arm stuff. Even there's a metric fuckton more effort going into the latest Intel x86_64 chip, there's a lot of silicon left on the table.