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Alan Kay once mentioned in passing (in Early History of Smalltalk I think) that newer processors tend to be optimized for languages like C. Of course it would

Alan Kay once mentioned in passing (in Early History of Smalltalk I think) that newer processors tend to be optimized for languages like C. Of course it would be difficult to make a garbage collector perform well on such platforms. Really, we have it backward. The question shouldn't be which languages run faster on current platforms, but which languages are easier to use (depends on the problem of course). Once you know which programming patterns humans best deal with, you can optimize the implementation stack all the way to the Nand gates. It's a pity, a shame, that we currently have to stop before touching the silicon.

shrughes 14y ago
> Once you know which programming patterns humans best deal with, you can optimize the implementation stack all the way to the Nand gates. This is a complete hand-waving fantasy.
- gaius 14y ago
  Not at all. You only need to look at even simple CPU specs like number and type of registers to see this kind of thinking in action, and this has been going on for a long time.
rbanffy 14y ago
The sad fact is that most current computers are built to run Windows, meaning, yes, their processors are optimized to run code written in C. This is not entirely bad, because it helps make unixes run efficiently too, but we cannot expect anything very revolutionary at the ISA level unless we are willing too burn a couple billions. Azul Systems July processors designed to run Java, and, in particular, to run garbage collection efficiently, but it is so costly to build silicon they left the hardware business.
- loup-vaillant 14y ago
  > Azul Systems July processors designed to run Java, and, in particular, to run garbage collection efficiently That sounds really interesting. Do we know what kind of feature made these processors more suitable to Java byte-code and garbage collection? How did it fare compared to then current mainstream processors? Can we speculate on how it would have fared if Intel or AMD build this kind of processor instead?

shrughes 14y ago

> Once you know which programming patterns humans best deal with, you can optimize the implementation stack all the way to the Nand gates. This is a complete hand-waving fantasy.

gaius 14y ago
Not at all. You only need to look at even simple CPU specs like number and type of registers to see this kind of thinking in action, and this has been going on for a long time.

rbanffy 14y ago

The sad fact is that most current computers are built to run Windows, meaning, yes, their processors are optimized to run code written in C. This is not entirely bad, because it helps make unixes run efficiently too, but we cannot expect anything very revolutionary at the ISA level unless we are willing too burn a couple billions. Azul Systems July processors designed to run Java, and, in particular, to run garbage collection efficiently, but it is so costly to build silicon they left the hardware business.

loup-vaillant 14y ago
> Azul Systems July processors designed to run Java, and, in particular, to run garbage collection efficiently That sounds really interesting. Do we know what kind of feature made these processors more suitable to Java byte-code and garbage collection? How did it fare compared to then current mainstream processors? Can we speculate on how it would have fared if Intel or AMD build this kind of processor instead?