Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> The x86-64 ISA is a POS BTW.

> It needs major refactoring. The backwards compatibility is killing the platform.

People have been saying that for 30 years at this point. You can dislike the ISA all you want, but the platform doesn't seem to be dieing all that fast, and compatibility helps it live. Compatibility is how you sell chips: windows on arm doesn't sell because people are concerned about running their apps; android on x86 didn't sell well in part because many apps with native code didn't include x86 binaries; mac os on arm sells because Apple made things work and pushes hard.

A better ISA doesn't prevent chips from burning up. Apple's chips don't burn up because they stay away from high clocks and high power, which is easy when they force vertical integration.



The Intel ISA CPUs have too many features for backwards compatibility.

This puts a lot of design strain, CPU have to support everything, have to emulate behaviors.

Too much bloat on the CPU.


Emulating behaviors are not on the hot paths if they are even implemented in silicon at all rather than microcode that may as well not exist if you don't use those features. This is entirely irrelevant to the issue of CPUs burning up under normal use.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: