3 ms·

My opinion may be in the minority here but I think the crux of this article is misguided. It's like a farmer saying, "I long for the days before the combustion

by pmorici 17y ago

My opinion may be in the minority here but I think the crux of this article is misguided. It's like a farmer saying, "I long for the days before the combustion engine because I love planting 3 acres by hand". I also think the two basic premises of the article are just plain wrong. There are plenty of examples where people have written their own operating system from scratch for the x86, there have been articles posted on HN describing as much. So to say that todays processors are "to complex to understand" is just wrong. On the assertion that programming has devolved into "learning another man's APIs" that's just a fact of engineering I suspect the Z80 had a thick manual describing all of it's interfaces and inner workings. The AVR micro controllers I've worked with, the same ones on the Ardunio the author says is still "fun", have a manual that is over 320 pages long describing in effect the processor's API.

jgrahamc 17y ago
I disagree. That would the case if I were to say: "Please take away this Mac Pro and all the wonderful software because what I really want is a Z-80". I'm not saying that today's processors are too complex to understand, I'm saying that the software running in the machine in front of me is too complex. I wouldn't mind writing assembly code for a modern processor at all. But if we are talking about what's likely to make me happy, it's probably a relatively simple CPU, some I/O ports and a soldering iron. That's probably like the farmer wishing a had a kitchen garden and was growing enough food for himself.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  That's precisely the feeling that drove me to free software - I wanted to regain some of the understanding of how the computer worked before Windows took it away from me. While I like to mention my much beloved Apple II, even a 8088 PC running DOS is somewhat understandable.
Goladus 17y ago
It's quite probable that x86 processors are more complex than they need to be-- at least, the instruction set is more complicated than is necessary. CISC architectures are meant to make life easier for assembly language programmers, letting you do things like load, multiply and store in a single command. In practice that hasn't been all that valuable, because programmers just use higher level languages like C when they need that much expressive power. From a compiler perspective, it's easier (or at worst about the same) to generate code for RISC than CISC, and RISC has much more flexibility with regards to automatic optimization, pipelining, etc.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  "quite probable" here is, perhaps, the biggest understatement ever presented on HN. Within every Core i7 is a Pentium M, within which is a Pentium, a 486, a 386, a 286, a 8086 and most of a 8085. The PC architecture is no better. I bet that, buried deep in the Centrino Duo notebook I use to work, there is a vestigial ISA bus that has to be primed before the text screen can be written to and the scan rate matched to an imaginary CGA monitor.
- anamax 17y ago
  > RISC has much more flexibility with regards to automatic optimization, pipelining, etc. Folks designing processors haven't believed that since before the Pentium was introduced. (I went to dinner with some of the MIPS principals right after the first Pentium tech talk. Their conclusion was that everyone would finally figure out that the RISC/CISC wars were over and they'd lost.) There are lots of things that go into designing a high performance processor. Instruction decoding and its consequences have little effect/cost compared to everything else.
  - tyvkiuiyi 17y ago
    Tell that to the people at ARM who ship 10 RISC cpus for every Intel desktop chip out there.
    - anamax 17y ago
      If we're counting CPUs shipped, ARM is in the noise compared to 6502 and the like, let alone the 8051s. The claim was that RISC had certain advantages that would have significant performance or cost consequences. That hasn't happened. ARM wins where it wins for reasons that have nothing to do with RISC/CISC.
  - Goladus 17y ago
    When pentium was introduced? Yeah, it looked like RISC had lost. But that was not because it wasn't a better design, but because Intel had a lot invested in the x86 and that's the processor that was used in the PC. Now that mobile devices are becoming as important or more important than PCs, the field has changed. Also, it's possible that RISC's parallel processing advantages will matter given the current trend toward multiple processors and multiple cores.
jdburdette 17y ago
My father-in-law loves to work on cars, but he can only fix simple things on a newer model car because of all the complexity. That's why he still drives his old 1960's pickup truck. This article isn't talking about efficiency, it's talking about joy -- the basis of all hobbies.

by pmorici 17y ago

jgrahamc 17y ago

I disagree. That would the case if I were to say: "Please take away this Mac Pro and all the wonderful software because what I really want is a Z-80". I'm not saying that today's processors are too complex to understand, I'm saying that the software running in the machine in front of me is too complex. I wouldn't mind writing assembly code for a modern processor at all. But if we are talking about what's likely to make me happy, it's probably a relatively simple CPU, some I/O ports and a soldering iron. That's probably like the farmer wishing a had a kitchen garden and was growing enough food for himself.

rbanffy 17y ago
That's precisely the feeling that drove me to free software - I wanted to regain some of the understanding of how the computer worked before Windows took it away from me. While I like to mention my much beloved Apple II, even a 8088 PC running DOS is somewhat understandable.

Goladus 17y ago

It's quite probable that x86 processors are more complex than they need to be-- at least, the instruction set is more complicated than is necessary. CISC architectures are meant to make life easier for assembly language programmers, letting you do things like load, multiply and store in a single command. In practice that hasn't been all that valuable, because programmers just use higher level languages like C when they need that much expressive power. From a compiler perspective, it's easier (or at worst about the same) to generate code for RISC than CISC, and RISC has much more flexibility with regards to automatic optimization, pipelining, etc.

rbanffy 17y ago
"quite probable" here is, perhaps, the biggest understatement ever presented on HN. Within every Core i7 is a Pentium M, within which is a Pentium, a 486, a 386, a 286, a 8086 and most of a 8085. The PC architecture is no better. I bet that, buried deep in the Centrino Duo notebook I use to work, there is a vestigial ISA bus that has to be primed before the text screen can be written to and the scan rate matched to an imaginary CGA monitor.
anamax 17y ago
> RISC has much more flexibility with regards to automatic optimization, pipelining, etc. Folks designing processors haven't believed that since before the Pentium was introduced. (I went to dinner with some of the MIPS principals right after the first Pentium tech talk. Their conclusion was that everyone would finally figure out that the RISC/CISC wars were over and they'd lost.) There are lots of things that go into designing a high performance processor. Instruction decoding and its consequences have little effect/cost compared to everything else.
- tyvkiuiyi 17y ago
  Tell that to the people at ARM who ship 10 RISC cpus for every Intel desktop chip out there.
  - anamax 17y ago
    If we're counting CPUs shipped, ARM is in the noise compared to 6502 and the like, let alone the 8051s. The claim was that RISC had certain advantages that would have significant performance or cost consequences. That hasn't happened. ARM wins where it wins for reasons that have nothing to do with RISC/CISC.
- Goladus 17y ago
  When pentium was introduced? Yeah, it looked like RISC had lost. But that was not because it wasn't a better design, but because Intel had a lot invested in the x86 and that's the processor that was used in the PC. Now that mobile devices are becoming as important or more important than PCs, the field has changed. Also, it's possible that RISC's parallel processing advantages will matter given the current trend toward multiple processors and multiple cores.

jdburdette 17y ago

My father-in-law loves to work on cars, but he can only fix simple things on a newer model car because of all the complexity. That's why he still drives his old 1960's pickup truck. This article isn't talking about efficiency, it's talking about joy -- the basis of all hobbies.