28 Apr
2013
28 Apr
'13
1:45 p.m.
On 2013-Apr-27 15:41:46 -0700, Larry McVoy <lm(a)bitmover.com> wrote:
What I'd like is a new 64 bit PDP-11.
That might be fun to program in assembler but I suspect the
performance would suck. The ISA complexity implies a microcoded
implementation (with all the associated overheads). And compilers
generally have difficulty taking advantage of complex ISAs.
That assembler was wonderful to
read and write, only a short distance from C.
Agreed.
x86 makes me puke.
Likewise. Warts upon warts... It's an abomination.
MIPS
and Alpha aren't much better (I was hoping for better from Alpha but they
seemed like they copied MIPS).
I disagree on the Alpha. Apart from the idiotic decision to combine
imprecise exceptions with needing software support for IEEE FP, I
thought it was a very clean and well designed architecture. It wasn't
fun to program in directly but it was intended for use with compiled
languages. The designers went to a fair amount of effort to avoid
embedding bottlenecks in the language.
For anyone who's into really CISC architectures, check out the iAPX432.
--
Peter Jeremy