5 ms·
Interesting point about the x86-64 patents expiring and the possibility of third parties making chips for that instruction set. Is it just so big and clunky tha
by angrygoat 6y ago
Interesting point about the x86-64 patents expiring and the possibility of third parties making chips for that instruction set. Is it just so big and clunky that the energy is with ARM / RISC-V?
- ekianjo 6y agothere are more recent patents involving extensions on x86_64 which are essential for more modern processors, I believe.
- sgerenser 6y agoYes, being x64 compatible but not supporting SSE4 or AVX is basically useless.
- saagarjha 6y agoRosetta won't support this, it's far from "useless". Good programs should detect the lack of support and fall back to earlier extensions.
- sgerenser 6y agoRosetta is a compatibility stopgap, not a whole new CPU. Apple making a new chip with the x86/x64 instruction set and not supporting any modern SIMD features would be pointless. I’ve seen AVX2 code that performs nearly 8x faster than scalar code on the same CPU. Besides, where did you hear that Rosetta wont have to at least support SSE4? I think there are Mac apps that assume presence of these instructions since all of Apples macs since 2008 or so has had them.