Intel and AMD Contemplate Different Replacements for x86 Interrupt Handling
Argh, why do author's write stuff like this -- <i>"It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a creaking old bit of wheezing ironmongery that, had the gods of microprocessor architecture been more generous, would have been smote into oblivion long ago."</i><p>Just because a technology is "old" doesn't mean it is useless, or needs to be replaced. I'm all in favor of fixing problems, and refactoring to improve flow and remove inefficiencies. I am <i>not</i> a fan of re-inventing the wheel because gee, we've had this particular wheel for 50 years and its doing fine but hey let's reimagine it anyway.<p>That said, the kink in x86 architecture was put their by "IBM PC Compatibility" and a Windows/Intel monopoly that went on way too long. But even knowing <i>why</i> the thing has these weird artifacts that just means the engineers are working under constraints you don't understand, doesn't give you license to dismiss what they've done as needing to be "wiped away."<p>We are in a period where enthusiasts can design, build, and operate a completely bespoke ISA and micro-architecture with dense low cost FPGAs. Maybe they don't run at multi-GHz speeds but if you want to contribute positively to the question of computer architecture, there has never been a better time. You don't even have to build the whole thing! You can just add it into an existing architecture and compare how you do against it.<p>Want to do flow control colored register allocation for speculative instruction retirement? You can build the entire execution unit in an FPGA and throw instructions at it to your hearts content and provide analysis of the results.<p>Okay, enough ranting. I want AARCH64 to win so we can reset the problem set back to a smaller number of workarounds, but I think the creativity of people trying to advance the x86 architecture given the constraints is not something to belittled, it is to be admired.