They’ve looked beyond x86 before. It didn’t go well.
This article is focused on the ancient risc vs cisc mindset that’s outdated, and sort of misses a lot of what’s going on in modern processors. THere’s several facets beyond the ISA that really affect modern processors, especially x86 ones which use a section on their chip to convert x86 instructions into micro-code. It’s something they’ve been doing for like 20+ years now. It’s an optimization that breaks them into simpler codes so they can reorder operations and optimize pipelines to prevent stalls.
There is a better argument to be made about whether the legacy of x86 backwards compatibility is limiting the processors, and that is very real. There’s a lot of really good articles around this, and despite all of the claims, we’ve seen some amazing advancements from both Intel and AMD while still supporting that instruction set.
They’ve looked beyond x86 before. It didn’t go well.
This article is focused on the ancient risc vs cisc mindset that’s outdated, and sort of misses a lot of what’s going on in modern processors. THere’s several facets beyond the ISA that really affect modern processors, especially x86 ones which use a section on their chip to convert x86 instructions into micro-code. It’s something they’ve been doing for like 20+ years now. It’s an optimization that breaks them into simpler codes so they can reorder operations and optimize pipelines to prevent stalls.
There is a better argument to be made about whether the legacy of x86 backwards compatibility is limiting the processors, and that is very real. There’s a lot of really good articles around this, and despite all of the claims, we’ve seen some amazing advancements from both Intel and AMD while still supporting that instruction set.