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> with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not

> with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. But some things like SPARC were just headache-inducing https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-window/ https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-windo...

tyingq 5y ago
It was pretty amazing to enjoy 64 bit computing and before Intel had it. They were more popular in some niches, for a time, than anything else.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yes Intel's attitude is too much based on marketing sometimes. "Consumers don't need 64-bit" (and trying to promote Itanium) "Consumers don't need ECC RAM" It holds back the industry now that they are the only PC platform. PS: I think Itanium was a really good idea but again marketing made it unviable. They wanted to position it purely for servers, just at a time where there was a real cost focus on servers using commodity hardware (e.g. from Google)
lmm 5y ago
> And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. I agree with this part, but the sparc register windows are completely reasonable and obvious.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  It might be reasonable, but it's a chore, especially on linux to work with it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902
  - mst 5y ago
    "Avoiding needing to spill registers to the stack" is a focus of much optimisation work in lots of places - and, yeah, it's absolutely work but the performance gains can still be worth it. Plus I'd argue that SPARC is enough simpler to work with than x86 in other ways that you could look at it as "spending your complexity budget somewhere else" more than it being more headache inducing. (though admittedly I cut my teeth on assembly on an ARM2 so basically every modern architecture is kinda headache inducingly complicated to me ;)
_ph_ 5y ago
Every architecture has its quirks. But compared to x86 and its legacy, most RISC architectures were quite nice. And the point is, you had multiple competing archtectures, so there was a chance to try out new ideas and find out, which of those were actually good.

tyingq 5y ago

It was pretty amazing to enjoy 64 bit computing and before Intel had it. They were more popular in some niches, for a time, than anything else.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yes Intel's attitude is too much based on marketing sometimes. "Consumers don't need 64-bit" (and trying to promote Itanium) "Consumers don't need ECC RAM" It holds back the industry now that they are the only PC platform. PS: I think Itanium was a really good idea but again marketing made it unviable. They wanted to position it purely for servers, just at a time where there was a real cost focus on servers using commodity hardware (e.g. from Google)

lmm 5y ago

> And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. I agree with this part, but the sparc register windows are completely reasonable and obvious.

raverbashing 5y ago
It might be reasonable, but it's a chore, especially on linux to work with it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902
- mst 5y ago
  "Avoiding needing to spill registers to the stack" is a focus of much optimisation work in lots of places - and, yeah, it's absolutely work but the performance gains can still be worth it. Plus I'd argue that SPARC is enough simpler to work with than x86 in other ways that you could look at it as "spending your complexity budget somewhere else" more than it being more headache inducing. (though admittedly I cut my teeth on assembly on an ARM2 so basically every modern architecture is kinda headache inducingly complicated to me ;)

_ph_ 5y ago

Every architecture has its quirks. But compared to x86 and its legacy, most RISC architectures were quite nice. And the point is, you had multiple competing archtectures, so there was a chance to try out new ideas and find out, which of those were actually good.