2 ms·
You're right in a sense, in that even really hairy decode problems like x86 only add 15% or so to a core's overall power usage. But on the other hand verificat
by Symmetry 5y ago
You're right in a sense, in that even really hairy decode problems like x86 only add 15% or so to a core's overall power usage.
But on the other hand verification is a big NRE cost for chips and proving that that second ISA works correctly in all cases is a pretty substantial engineering cost even if the resulting chip is much the same.
- ants_a 5y agoIt likely wouldn't be 15% with an 8-wide x86 decoder if such a thing would even be possible within any reasonable clock budget. So in that sense a fixed width ISA does buy something. Also, given that chips today are mostly power limited, 15% power usage is 15% that could be used to increase performance in other ways.