Re:Jim Keller criticizes Nvidia's CUDA, x86
by snvzz on Sunday February 25, 2024 @03:01AM
(#39498641)
>This is bad for RISC since there is literally no advantage gained by losing backwards compatibility.
I respectfully disagree. There's a major advantage of losing backwards compatibility with established ISAs, and that is freedom from licensing.
e.g. The main strength of RISC-V is not even its technical superiority; It is the free license.
The other interpretation is that micro ops are actually a microarchitectural optimization and that RISC processors should use it too. The compressed instruction set of RISC-V is leaning towards that direction. RISC-V processors internally convert RISC-V instructions to RISC-V.
It is kind of hollow to talk about it, since it is hardly clear to say that this is a unique disadvantage or advantage.