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Inside the Itanium

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hammer-time dept.

vanguard writes: "Extreme Tech has a detailed overview of the Itanium. It's fairly long but it's worth your time if such things interest you."

1 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. it's always been about the compilers by jrst · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Many of the comments about compiler technology in this thread could be taken verbatim from discussions about RISC architectures 20 years ago. Or from the HLL (high level language) architecture discussions 30 years ago. (Anyone remember the cries for "closing the semantic gap" between processor's and languages? No? Point made.)

    Hardware is getting more complex; it takes more sophistication to deal with it. Binding a (general purpose) processor to a language in order to make language implementation easier is exactly the wrong way to support a wider variety of languages. Making the most of a processor's capabilities is what compilers are for. That's what compiler writers get paid for.

    That's not to say I'm in love with the Itanium. At first glance I found it a baroque rehash of old ideas. But time--and compiler writer's--will tell.