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A comment on C Is Not a Low-Level Language. Parent comment

Re:C Is Not a Low-Level Language by swsieber on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @12:05PM (#16968274)
Correct - it's an argument for broadening the title.

Calling out a specific language as not being something leads one to ask, "Well what is?". In this case, there is no qualifying alternative, so the title might as well be, "There is no low-level language for CPUs".

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Re:C Is Not a Low-Level Language by munificent on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @12:53PM (#16968821)
> Calling out a specific language as not being something leads one to ask, "Well what is?".

The article does basically answer this. The last section is about what it would mean to design a chip such that a low level language were possible to design for it.

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Re:C Is Not a Low-Level Language by Avshalom on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @12:07PM (#16968299)
... any more.

It's not a category that can't exist, it just doesn't have any members right now.

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Re:C Is Not a Low-Level Language by mattnewport on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @12:43PM (#16968711)
It actually can't exist at all for current modern CPUs (x64/ARM/PowerPC) since they don't expose a programming interface for many of the things discussed in the article (speculative / out of order execution, register renaming, full cache control).
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Re:C Is Not a Low-Level Language by Avshalom on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @12:50PM (#16968787)
Yeah but it can for all sorts of microcontroller-y chips; embedded CPUs; DSPs; theoretical future CPUs that aren't trying to both act like a PDP11 and go faster every year...
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