Re:Ask HN: Does anyone have something negative to say about ...
by londons_explore on Thursday July 26, 2018 @04:22AM
(#17615911)
I question if RISC-V went far enough.
Having human readable and understandable instructions seems unnecessary in the days of optimizing compilers.
Instead, the CPU should have a bunch of hardware, and then allow the compiler to define it's own instruction set via a large control blob. Each software binary should begin with "here are all the instructions I'm going to use, and here is what actions should be taken for each".
The mapping the applications desires for each possible instruction to the actual hardware should then be left to some OS component which is easily upgradable. It is the component which will have by far the biggest performance impact.
Having human readable and understandable instructions seems unnecessary in the days of optimizing compilers.
Instead, the CPU should have a bunch of hardware, and then allow the compiler to define it's own instruction set via a large control blob. Each software binary should begin with "here are all the instructions I'm going to use, and here is what actions should be taken for each".
The mapping the applications desires for each possible instruction to the actual hardware should then be left to some OS component which is easily upgradable. It is the component which will have by far the biggest performance impact.