OSDev.org

<rant>
Honestly, can we just get rid of these dumb ^&%% processors? I can't stand them, screw all this backwards compatibility crap. It pisses me of. Dang it somebody make a new processor with just ONE mode ( for the desktop market) and stick with it .
</rant>

Ok I'm done. This is just really annoying me lately.

I feel your pain. IMHO Itanium is a better architecture, but compatibility with 32-bit programs is necessary (on my 64-bit Windows 7 computer, almost all the programs are still 32-bit).

If managed languages become more accepted, we might see a purely 64-bit desktop processor in the future. But until then you're still going to need to drop to real mode to use the BIOS

From what I've seen of the Italium(or Itanium or whichever it is) it seems to be a much better processor design. It can be highly optimized by the VLIW mechanism (the compiler decides where multiple instructions can be executed at once) and the huge amount of registers is very appealing.. I really wished it would have caught on more.. but it was mainly only available in servers.

x86 should have been gone some time ago among the 386 days.. but people with their freaking DOS made them decide it was better to offer compatibility..

At least put the itanium on the desktop market. That would calm me for the time being.

JohnnyTheDon wrote:If managed languages become more accepted, we might see a purely 64-bit desktop processor in the future. But until then you're still going to need to drop to real mode to use the BIOS

I'm not sure what managed languages have to do with architecture. Care to educate me?

Well its one way to make programs easily cross platform. At the moment 64-bit versions of programs have to be compiled seperately. However, programs written in (for example) .NET are compiled to the local architecture at runtime. So if you had an Itanium and an x86 processor, the same binary would run on both.

I guess managed is kind of ambigous because you could have a managed language that doesn't use JIT compiling. What I was trying to say is that any language/platform that uses an intermediate language that is portable (like MSIL) would help make a 64-bit only processor more attractive for the desktop market.

JohnnyTheDon wrote:Well its one way to make programs easily cross platform. At the moment 64-bit versions of programs have to be compiled seperately. However, programs written in (for example) .NET are compiled to the local architecture at runtime. So if you had an Itanium and an x86 processor, the same binary would run on both.

I guess managed is kind of ambigous because you could have a managed language that doesn't use JIT compiling. What I was trying to say is that any language/platform that uses an intermediate language that is portable (like MSIL) would help make a 64-bit only processor more attractive for the desktop market.

Ah, I see. Virtual Machines, not managed languages. That I can get behind. LLVM is awesome.

Dudes, if you honestly recommend a PowerPC as an alternative, you haven't witnessed the beauty of a 680x0... IMHO, that was the last of the "noble" processors...

Solar wrote:Dudes, if you honestly recommend a PowerPC as an alternative, you haven't witnessed the beauty of a 680x0... IMHO, that was the last of the "noble" processors...

PowerPC is the daddy. It's just beautiful in every way.

Itanium sickens me. And you can fry an egg on any Itanic running with 0% CPU usage. You could heat a 4-bedroom house if you type "/bin/yes >/dev/null &" a few times...

What would be cool is if someone would develop a processor for the free os market. That way we could develop and os and software for it. Then we could release it to the public. Too bad the will most likely never happen.

nekros wrote:What would be cool is if someone would develop a processor for the free os market. That way we could develop and os and software for it. Then we could release it to the public. Too bad the will most likely never happen.

Any processor can be used for free OS's or software so I do not quite understand your point.

Honestly, can we just get rid of these dumb ^&%% processors? I can't stand them, screw all this backwards compatibility crap.

If you dont like a processor, or a family of processors, use or target another one. Creating a generalization like that is poor.

(I personally like that they are backward compatible. It is a hard task to maintain, but also makes software portability easier to maintain.)

nekros wrote:What would be cool is if someone would develop a processor for the free os market. That way we could develop and os and software for it. Then we could release it to the public. Too bad the will most likely never happen.

I've started writing an open-source 16-bit processor in C that could very easily be made 32-bit or higher. I'm planning on releasing it as soon as I finish the CSR system (Call Service Routine) and a simple assembler.

neon wrote:

nekros wrote:What would be cool is if someone would develop a processor for the free os market. That way we could develop and os and software for it. Then we could release it to the public. Too bad the will most likely never happen.

Any processor can be used for free OS's or software so I do not quite understand your point.

Honestly, can we just get rid of these dumb ^&%% processors? I can't stand them, screw all this backwards compatibility crap.

If you dont like a processor, or a family of processors, use or target another one. Creating a generalization like that is poor.

(I personally like that they are backward compatible. It is a hard task to maintain, but also makes software portability easier to maintain.)

I'm just looking for a clean, processor that is used for desktops. 32 , 64 bit doesn't really matter. I just wish intel or amd would start making RISC desktops(processors that is).

nekros wrote:I'm just looking for a clean, processor that is used for desktops. 32 , 64 bit doesn't really matter. I just wish intel or amd would start making RISC desktops(processors that is).

PowerPC Mac?
Even better: Hitachi SH-4 with Windows CE (dreamcast, anyone?)

Besides, if people would start producing new architectures instead of expanding and ruining existing ones, maybe all those (...) developers would get their butts kicked enough to actually write portable software instead of the current crap.

Combuster wrote:

nekros wrote:I'm just looking for a clean, processor that is used for desktops. 32 , 64 bit doesn't really matter. I just wish intel or amd would start making RISC desktops(processors that is).

Besides, if people would start producing new architectures instead of expanding and ruining existing ones, maybe all those (...) developers would get their butts kicked enough to actually write portable software instead of the current crap.

I definitely agree here.