2026-09-01 16:15 UTC
@AmenZwa@mathstodon.xyz
If you want to design a CISC, I have plenty of experience there, and would be happy to toss in a bunch of highly complicated instructions.
I just found out yesterday that the infamous REP string instructions from the 8086 family, that were originally reviled for being as slow as just repeating by hand, have been revived in recent-ish x64 CPUs and are now faster than doing it by hand.
Replies (1)
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@AmenZwa@mathstodon.xyz 2026-09-01 16:22
@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz It took only half-a-century for the REP upgrade to arrive. We’re beating F1’s upgrade cycles, hands down—in the opposite direction.😆 I know you have done tonnes of ISA and other low-level stuff, much more than most. But I steer clear of that marsh. Tiny custom hardware is plenty hard enough for me.