casperes1996
Site Champ
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2021
- Posts
- 311
Hey everyone,
I just now heard of X86-S; A new ISA revision proposed by Intel (external architecture spec: x86-S External Architectural Specification - Intelintel.comhttps://cdrdv2-public.intel.com › x86s-EAS-v1-...)
It seems to be a cleanup of x86_64 that I personally welcome. Removing a lot of the legacy stuff from x86 that modern systems don't really use anyway. Not sure how much they can really win with it on the CPU side given that they still need instruction set compatibility; Some instructions aren't allowed behaviour anymore and won't have to be considered outside of perhaps generating a general protection exception, but the encoding is still the same for everything.
Boot up times should be at least a tiny bit better though. Switching to protected and long mode hardly takes any time at all on a modern chip but it's still something you won't need to do on an x86-S chip. Although you now do need to check CPUID to see if it is x86-S so swingers and roundabouts.
Would love to hear people's thoughts
I just now heard of X86-S; A new ISA revision proposed by Intel (external architecture spec: x86-S External Architectural Specification - Intelintel.comhttps://cdrdv2-public.intel.com › x86s-EAS-v1-...)
It seems to be a cleanup of x86_64 that I personally welcome. Removing a lot of the legacy stuff from x86 that modern systems don't really use anyway. Not sure how much they can really win with it on the CPU side given that they still need instruction set compatibility; Some instructions aren't allowed behaviour anymore and won't have to be considered outside of perhaps generating a general protection exception, but the encoding is still the same for everything.
Boot up times should be at least a tiny bit better though. Switching to protected and long mode hardly takes any time at all on a modern chip but it's still something you won't need to do on an x86-S chip. Although you now do need to check CPUID to see if it is x86-S so swingers and roundabouts.
Would love to hear people's thoughts
