3 ms·

It would be nice to see the m68k get some 64 bit love to bring it right up to date. I've been considering what such a beast could look like compared to the crud

• cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  The moment you start doing that you are going to lose backwards compatibility anyways, so may as well go back to the drawing board and revisit other compromises made in the ISA (like separate data and address registers, for example. Or big endian instead of little endian) and you end up with something else, IMHO. Maybe something closer to a 64-bit version of the NS32k ISA.
  • KerrAvon 5y ago
    Those changes would lose the character of the M68k, though.
    • mrlonglong 5y ago
      Yes, the instruction set is laid out rather beautifully, this is something I'd really like to see to implemented in 64 bits with support for true SMP and see how well that performs against other architectures.
      • cmrdporcupine 5y ago
        It's a nice CISC, but the two separate register files are something you'd be silly to carry over to 64-bit. I think the lesson from x86 is that it's entirely possible to make a legacy CISC ISA perform really well with enough engineering. But the question is: why do that for an extinct arch? Only 32-bits, but ColdFire attempted to revive the ISA and that didn't work out, either.
        • mrlonglong 5y ago
          I think we would apply the lessons learned since the 90s and see where that gets us.