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PCI phased out? (Announce)

posted by marcov, 16.02.2011, 21:22

>
> Also, it really is hard to rewrite everything from scratch. I guess I don't
> have to tell you (BSD fan). Worse is when it's undocumented, which makes
> things almost impossible. At least FreeDOS (free/libre) "mostly" does
> everything we need, which is no small feat given all the efforts that went
> into it.
Huh, how does it replace DV/X? Does it have job control or so?

> > 2x fast only due to 64bit if used same MMX/SSE insctructions both on
> > 32bit and 64bit CPU?
>
> 64-bit is not faster. Not at all. Only in very rare cases. It really is
> almost a waste to pretend otherwise. None of us home users need 64-bit
> unless we're doing something weird (which we never needed to do in the past
> 20 years) using huge amounts of RAM. It's easy to say nobody needs it
> because nobody used to have it!! How can you "need" what you don't have?
In my experience it about evens out on non-Windows. The larger datasegment size on one hand, and the large number of registers and raised minimal instruction level (and the systematic use of both in every library) about cancel eachother.

Crafted 32-bit code is probably faster, but on average code it cancels out.

> Why did they not implement V86 under long mode?

One emulation only. 64-bit has 32-bit. 32-bit has 16-bit.

> Dunno, probably because
> commercially MS and Linux don't need (nor want) it, not in the slightest.
That next to nobody needs it is probably true too.

> Or maybe there was some unknown (to us) technical limit like only a certain
> amount of transistors could fit on limited die space (extremely blind
> guess, I'm no hardware engineer). Or maybe they were lazy, who knows.
And more importantly, if they add it now for a few 16-bit vigilantes, they can't get rid of it till 2025. Keep in mind that 80386 was introduced in 1985, and as an arch is only starting to be phased out.

If you take 2003 as start of x86_64 that means if they had added 16-bit mode they probably had to lug it along till 2003+(2010-1985)=2028

> I don't ever (!) want them to
> remove 32-bit compatibility.

I'm not that afraid about 32-bit EXEs running, but 32-bit OSes are in danger due to the BIOS->EFI change.

> It's very easy to imagine them forcing
> us to make all our binaries PE64, which would be very very short-sighted,
> IMNSHO.
Naah. The wrath of the long tail rules there. PE bins will run for quite a while within windows. And I guess 32-bit OSes will run for a handful of years minimum too. Anyone who says that he can look forward longer than that must be a multi-millionaire, since he would have bought a gazillion Apple shares early this decennium if he could forsee IT that well.

> Yes, modern PCs are crap. It's great that they're cheap and powerful, but
> they're too complicated, somewhat horrible licensing (and patents), too
> many incompatible APIs, binary formats, OSes, etc., and honestly we've even
> lost functionality because of incompatible hardware. It's a far cry from
> the 486/586 days when everything was "easy". It's not that I want us to go
> back or lose "modern" functionality (eh?), but it was indeed a simpler and
> better time in some ways, no worries about all these complicated, broken
> modern things that (almost) nobody needs.
Sigh, more nagging and whining. What are you going to about it?

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