@rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place
Post #2409996
2025-09-09 02:03 UTC
@regehr@mastodon.social @steve@discuss.systems x86 has always had a staircase of options where you can gradually throw more budget and it and get incremental wins every gen.
It's a crooked staircase with some trick steps, but it's a staircase, not a brick wall. :)
Replies (1)
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@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place 2025-09-09 04:13
@rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place @regehr@mastodon.social @steve@discuss.systems The one actual "killer" feature of the x86 ISA was load-op. It turns out that a LOT of instructions want to load a value from memory, do an operation on it, and never reference that value again. Most RISC ISAs make you send that value through a register, which is precious rename/read/write/etc bandwidth. But, offset that against the more complex encoding of load-op. Which one wins is very context-specific, and it doesn't win by that much.