Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 23 Feb 2003 01:37:26 -0800 | From | William Lee Irwin III <> | Subject | Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call |
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On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 02:18:20PM -0800, William Lee Irwin III wrote: >> I'm not sure what's so nice about x86-64; another opcode prefix >> controlled extension atop the festering pile of existing x86 crud
On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 08:17:24PM -0500, Benjamin LaHaise wrote: > What's nice about x86-64 is that it runs existing 32 bit apps fast and > doesn't suffer from the blisteringly small caches that were part of your > rant. Plus, x86-64 binaries are not horrifically bloated like ia64. > Not to mention that the amount of reengineering in compilers like > gcc required to get decent performance out of it is actually sane.
Rant? It was just a catalogue of other things that are nasty. The point was that PAE's not special, it's one of a very long list of very ugly uglinesses, and my list wasn't anywhere near exhaustive. But yes, more cache is good. Unfortunately the amount of baggage from 32-bit x86 stuff still puts a good chunk of systems programming into the old bring your own barfbag territory.
On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 02:18:20PM -0800, William Lee Irwin III wrote: >> sounds every bit as bad any other attempt to prolong x86. Some of >> the system device -level cleanups like the HPET look nice, though.
On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 08:17:24PM -0500, Benjamin LaHaise wrote: > HPET is part of one of the PCYY specs and even available on 32 bit x86, > there are just not that many bug free implements yet. Since x86-64 made > it part of the base platform and is testing it from launch, they actually > have a chance at being debugged in the mass market versions.
Well, it beats the heck out of the TSC and the PIT, and x86-64 is apparently supposed to have it "for real".
I'm not excited at all about another opcode prefix and pagetable format.
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