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Re:Intel releases the last Itanium chip, the 9700 by CalChris on Saturday May 13, 2017 @05:22PM (#14333093)
No, Skylake is not a RISC internally. Find something from the Intel Optimization Manual or their patents saying that. I been over this already. μops are hundreds of bits wide. Ain't nothing reduced about that.

Read up on horizontal microprogramming. A RISC ISA is an encoding with an opcode. A μop is really just a long set of fields with some bits clocking some FUs on and others off. There is no decoding; there is no opcode.

Re:Intel releases the last Itanium chip, the 9700 by deepnotderp on Saturday May 13, 2017 @06:00PM (#14333237)
I'm aware of horizontal microprogramming,and I checked again but I still don't see your point. Maybe link a reference?
Re:Intel releases the last Itanium chip, the 9700 by CalChris on Saturday May 13, 2017 @07:22PM (#14333499)
Smotherman.

A complete macroinstruction is executed by generating an appropriately timed sequence of groups of control signals (micro-operations).

http://www.frsn.utn.edu.ar/tecnicas3/manuales/Microprogrammi...

Originally, RISC cpus were hardwired but they are general purpose ISAs. RISC-V is fixed 32b ISA but has multiple formats controlled by an opcode.

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20160130deckyfosdemportinghe...

Original microprogrammed CPUs had a writeable control store (WCS). Modern processors translate CISC instructions into μops and cache this translation. The difference is the μop cache (μstore) vs WCS. FWIW, Skylake also has a WCS for obscure instructions.

Microinstructions, μops, do not have an opcode. They are not decoded. Bits in a horizontal μop gate logic on/off directly.

The RISC-V people do say RISC-like.

https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2016/EECS-2016-...

And even that's wrong. But then they never even define what a RISC is. So RISC-like could be anything.