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The article blames C for the processor designs that emulate older (non-parallel) processors. I think it can be summarised as C having a relatively straightforwa

The article blames C for the processor designs that emulate older (non-parallel) processors. I think it can be summarised as C having a relatively straightforward translation into hardware-friendly assembly in the past, but these days both major CPUs and compilers are working hard to preserve the same model, so that neither the assembly is hardware-friendly nor efficient/optimizing C compilers are straightforward.

joe_the_user 7y ago
But "C has a bad effect" is a lot different from "C is not low level". Maybe C had a bad effect because it's low level and they should have been emulating the lisp model instead - for all I know. Edit: I seems like it's really the flat memory model with single processing that CPUs and compiler-designers have been trying to preserve and that's not C-specific. Indeed, I think higher level languages are effectively more wedded to that. I mention in another reply - Nvidia GPUs, complex memory model, programmed with Cuda, a C++ system. It really seems like C as such only enters here as something to beat-up on to make other points (whatever the validity of the other points).
- defanor 7y ago
  There are different definitions of "low level language", but I think a charitable interpretation of the one in this article is that they view processors as providing a virtual machine, and count "levels" from what's more efficient for hardware (that is, the bits below that virtual machine). Though maybe a somewhat strange/confusing title was picked to attract attention.
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    OK, following that, in the case of the GPU, C++ code is translated into SPX "assembler" but SPX is very much a macro system and the programmer doesn't get access to the true low level. And I don't think we'll escape the situation that there will low-level emulation code that programmers can't and should not access. It's good to know but that doesn't change the levels programmers normally work with.
- gpderetta 7y ago
  >Maybe C had a bad effect because it's low level and they should have been emulating the lisp model instead - for all I know. Of course lisp machines were a thing. They went out of fashion when more conventional architectures could run lisp code faster than their dedicated machines.

joe_the_user 7y ago

But "C has a bad effect" is a lot different from "C is not low level". Maybe C had a bad effect because it's low level and they should have been emulating the lisp model instead - for all I know. Edit: I seems like it's really the flat memory model with single processing that CPUs and compiler-designers have been trying to preserve and that's not C-specific. Indeed, I think higher level languages are effectively more wedded to that. I mention in another reply - Nvidia GPUs, complex memory model, programmed with Cuda, a C++ system. It really seems like C as such only enters here as something to beat-up on to make other points (whatever the validity of the other points).

defanor 7y ago
There are different definitions of "low level language", but I think a charitable interpretation of the one in this article is that they view processors as providing a virtual machine, and count "levels" from what's more efficient for hardware (that is, the bits below that virtual machine). Though maybe a somewhat strange/confusing title was picked to attract attention.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  OK, following that, in the case of the GPU, C++ code is translated into SPX "assembler" but SPX is very much a macro system and the programmer doesn't get access to the true low level. And I don't think we'll escape the situation that there will low-level emulation code that programmers can't and should not access. It's good to know but that doesn't change the levels programmers normally work with.
gpderetta 7y ago
>Maybe C had a bad effect because it's low level and they should have been emulating the lisp model instead - for all I know. Of course lisp machines were a thing. They went out of fashion when more conventional architectures could run lisp code faster than their dedicated machines.