Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call

William Lee Irwin III
2003-02-23T09:28:51Z

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

On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 08:17:24PM -0500, Benjamin LaHaise wrote:
> 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.

Rant? It was just a catalogue of other things that are nasty. The
point was that PAE's not special, it's one of a very long list of
very ugly uglinesses, and my list wasn't anywhere near exhaustive.
But yes, more cache is good. Unfortunately the amount of baggage from
32-bit x86 stuff still puts a good chunk of systems programming into
the old bring your own barfbag territory.

On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 02:18:20PM -0800, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
>> sounds every bit as bad any other attempt to prolong x86. Some of
>> the system device -level cleanups like the HPET look nice, though.

On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 08:17:24PM -0500, Benjamin LaHaise wrote:
> 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.

Well, it beats the heck out of the TSC and the PIT, and x86-64 is
apparently supposed to have it "for real".

I'm not excited at all about another opcode prefix and pagetable format.

-- wli