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x86 and ARM are well maintained because they're 30-40 years old, but Power (it's not an acronym anymore) is not because it's 35 years old? I also suspect you'r

x86 and ARM are well maintained because they're 30-40 years old, but Power (it's not an acronym anymore) is not because it's 35 years old? I also suspect you're making the typical mistake of confusing PowerPC with modern Power ISA. They overlap strongly and PowerPC was virtually designed to be 64-bit ready from the very beginning, but chips based on the modern ISA are much more sophisticated. As someone who actually works on ppc64, the biggest two things that bother me about the ISA are the weirdness with r0 and the large number of instructions that must be implemented to be practical on a new design. Those are comparable to the quirks of any other "successful" ISA by your standards. They hardly make it junk.

tw1984 3y ago
> x86 and ARM are well maintained because they're 30-40 years old, but Power (it's not an acronym anymore) is not because it's 35 years old? I don't know how/why you came up with such strange idea. x86 and ARM are 30-40 years old, with their widespread market share, such long history became an advantage as numerous tools & apps got built in that 30-40 years timeframe. it is called the ecosystem. POWER as a failed ISA has been on its dead man walking stage for 30-40 years, nothing really get promoted & adopted. when you look back, it provides very strong certainty that if something good didn't happen in the last 30 years then there won't be a good chance for it happen in the next 5-10 years. its 30-40 years history is a disadvantage, because it is potential has been proven to be pretty bad. This is like being 50 years old & highly successful in tech putting you in a comfort spot as your age implies your decades long valuable & successful experience. Being 50 years old with a shitty CV full of failures is a different story, your age is a huge liability for obvious reasons. If the above is not obvious and you are in tech, then I have to say that you are in the wrong business.

tw1984 3y ago

> x86 and ARM are well maintained because they're 30-40 years old, but Power (it's not an acronym anymore) is not because it's 35 years old? I don't know how/why you came up with such strange idea. x86 and ARM are 30-40 years old, with their widespread market share, such long history became an advantage as numerous tools & apps got built in that 30-40 years timeframe. it is called the ecosystem. POWER as a failed ISA has been on its dead man walking stage for 30-40 years, nothing really get promoted & adopted. when you look back, it provides very strong certainty that if something good didn't happen in the last 30 years then there won't be a good chance for it happen in the next 5-10 years. its 30-40 years history is a disadvantage, because it is potential has been proven to be pretty bad. This is like being 50 years old & highly successful in tech putting you in a comfort spot as your age implies your decades long valuable & successful experience. Being 50 years old with a shitty CV full of failures is a different story, your age is a huge liability for obvious reasons. If the above is not obvious and you are in tech, then I have to say that you are in the wrong business.