Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call

Benjamin LaHaise
2003-02-23T01:07:15Z

On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 02:18:20PM -0800, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> I'm not sure what's so nice about x86-64; another opcode prefix
> controlled extension atop the festering pile of existing x86 crud

What's nice about x86-64 is that it runs existing 32 bit apps fast and
doesn't suffer from the blisteringly small caches that were part of your
rant. Plus, x86-64 binaries are not horrifically bloated like ia64.
Not to mention that the amount of reengineering in compilers like
gcc required to get decent performance out of it is actually sane.

> sounds every bit as bad any other attempt to prolong x86. Some of
> the system device -level cleanups like the HPET look nice, though.

HPET is part of one of the PCYY specs and even available on 32 bit x86,
there are just not that many bug free implements yet. Since x86-64 made
it part of the base platform and is testing it from launch, they actually
have a chance at being debugged in the mass market versions.

-ben
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