3 ms·
The "oh we can't make the cache as big as we'd like so we just make it two fully independent banks and bake the lack of synchronization of them into the ISA" in
by formerly_proven 3y ago
The "oh we can't make the cache as big as we'd like so we just make it two fully independent banks and bake the lack of synchronization of them into the ISA" in DEC Alpha very clearly falls into the "baking restrictions of today into the ISA", which virtually always turns out to be a bad idea.
- jacquesm 3y agoThat I'll be happy to agree with but compared to the 640 k limit it's clearly a manageable one, and one that end users of the system normally do not have to concern themselves with. I've written a (small) OS for x86/32 just prior to getting my hands on an Alpha and compared to that the Alpha looked (and still looks) like a model of sanity to me (as does 68xxx). Just the number of tricks required to get an x86 system properly booted up is off the scale, you have to deal with a whole pile of memory insanity including repeated switches between modes (and memory models) in order to get your stuff even loaded. I spent weeks debugging that loader, to the point that I had a reset switch connected to a musical instrument foot pedal so I didn't have dive under the desk 10 times per hour to reset the box I was writing this on. If not for DJGPP to validate the 32 bit code ahead of time I doubt I would have been able to bring it up at all (note this was well before VMs became a thing on consumer hardware).