in Toronto this month: International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| And to keep things on topic, you can run Linux on all of those
| architectures mentioned.  Debian supports them all. :)

Unix was an important enabling technology for the development of RISC
microprocessors.  It meant that the people creating the micros didn't
have to create an OS and attract users to a new OS.

Linux continues this tradition -- UNIX gave up almost 20 years ago.

Linux's second architecture was the Alpha if I remember correctly.

There were a few other OSes on new architectures:

- OpenVMS on Alpha

- Apollo's Domain/OS on their PRISM

- MS WinNT on MIPS

The success rate seems low.  But then few of the Unix-based ones are
still around either.

The worst things about x86 have been overcome:

- the 32-bit instruction set is OK; the 64-bit one even better

- the overhead for the mediocre instruction set is handled by throwing
  lots of cheap transistors at it.  At one point those transistors
  could have been used for much better purposes.  Now its just a tiny
  percent of the chip.

- x86 has decent code density which is actually useful.


We do really need to have some new ideas to break through the current
set of barriers.  Some way to use parallelism more effectively.  All
ways seem to involve pain.  Several are specialized and we reject them
because we're spoiled by how useful x86 is for so many applications.

Example: the IBM/Sony Cell is a novel design that is really good for
some applications.  Most of us haven't bit so it will probably die.

Example: Sun's Niagara looked good.  Few took it up.  It will probably
die.

Example: ARM or MIPS would make a useful notebook/netbook processor.
The mass market seems to require MS Windows.  So the ARM notebook
won't be important.  But the iPad is a disguised ARM notebook.
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