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How to Kill x86 and Thread-Level Parallelism

Posted by Cliff on from the plotting-a-digital-assassination dept.

kid inputs: "There's an interesting article discussing how one might go about 'killing' x86. The article details a number of different technological solutions, from a clean 64-bit replacement (Alpha?), to a radically different VLIW approach (Itanium), and an evolutionary solution (Opteron). As is often the case in situations like these, market forces dictate which technologies become entrenched and whether or not they stay that way (VHS vs Beta, anyone?). Another article by the same author covers hardware multi-threading and exploiting thread level parallelism, like Intel's Hyperthreading or IBM's POWER4 with its dual-cores on a die. These types of implementations can really pay off if the software supports it. In the case of servers, most applications tend to be multi-user, and so are parallel in nature."

5 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Let's kill x86! by ObviousGuy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We should rewrite all of our COBOL programs in C while we're at it.

    Might as well compound the folly of tossing out a perfectly good instruction set with the folly of tossing out perfectly good source code.

    Update, don't reinvent. The desire to reinvent is a junior engineer character flaw. It takes several experiences in spending long hours tracking down bugs in the new implementation rather than simply updating some older code that worked fine.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Let's kill x86! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It has to be put into protected mode at boot-up? Wow, that must take like 10 ns at least, every single time you cycle the power! You're right, better just scrap the whole thing...

  2. h/w vs s/w by StarBar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is much like my day to day work. The h/w guys thinks they are gods and always blames us s/w guys not to utilize the smartness of their designs fast enough. s/w compatibility is what counts for general purpose systems, and it always will. You can cry the guts out of yourself about bad system design and segment hell etc etc and it will not help.

  3. it doesn't matter anymore by ajagci · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Two decades ago, the instruction set still mattered because it was closely tied to how the processor executed things. Today, we can put enough logic between the instruction strem and the processor that the instruction set makes no difference anymore.

    And VLIW in particular is quite unconvincing: processors should rely less on compilers, not impose a bigger burden on software writers.

  4. Re:Power 4? by beerman2k · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Don't underestimate Intel. Unlike the Gnomes they have a plan

    Step 1: Hyperthreading
    Step 2: Multicore
    Step 3: Crush competition (i.e. Profit)