Re:Why would Apple Not tweak the A4's instruction set?
by nimrody on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @02:45PM
(#1452758)
I believe it is common for ARM licensees to add accelerators for multimedia, etc.
However, extending the processor itself goes against the entire RISC philosophy. Making the core more complicated makes speeding it more difficult and will not produce significant gain unless the additional instructions are very common.
A more complicated and less orthogonal instruction set also makes the compiler's job much more difficult.
However, extending the processor itself goes against the entire RISC philosophy. Making the core more complicated makes speeding it more difficult and will not produce significant gain unless the additional instructions are very common.
A more complicated and less orthogonal instruction set also makes the compiler's job much more difficult.