[innocenat]

Is this still really relevant? I can understood that it can be a problem 20 years ago, but with current processor with huge L1 cache and memory bandwidth, I am starting to think that 4 bytes (or variable 4/8 bytes) is not a bad tradeoff for density Vs superscalar.

[formerly_proven]

L1 size in 1999: 32 kB

L1 size in 2021: 64 kB

[cesarb]

The L1 size is yet another place where the x86 legacy hinders things. To avoid aliasing in a virtually indexed L1 cache (which is what you want for performance in a L1 cache, since a physically indexed cache would have to wait for the TLB lookup), the size of each way is limited to the page size, which on x86 is 4096 bytes. To get a 64 KiB L1 cache, it would have to be a 16-way cache, and increasing that too much makes the cache slower and more power-hungry. It's no wonder Apple decided to use a 16 KiB page size instead of a 4 KiB page size; a 64 KiB VIPT L1 cache with 16 KiB page size needs only 4 ways.

For the L1 instruction cache, aliasing shouldn't be a problem (since it's never written to), but this is once again another place where the x86 legacy hinders things: instead of requiring an explicit instruction to invalidate a virtual address in the instruction cache, it's implicitly invalidated when writing to that address.

[my123]

Apple M1 big core cache sizes:

256KB L1I/128KB L1D

Little cores: 128KB L1I/64KB L1D

[api]

Wow. Didn't know that. That should more than compensate for a very slight increase in code size for ARM64 vs X64.

When I use M1, AWS Graviton, or even older Cavium ThunderX chips I can't help but think that X86 is on its way out. The advantage is something you can subjectively see and feel. It's obvious, especially when it comes to power consumption.

Process node has something to do with it, but it's not the whole story. I'm typing on a 10nm Ice Lake MacBook Air and while this chip is better than older 14nm Intel laptops it's still just shockingly crushed by the M1 on every metric. 10nm -> 5nm is not enough to explain that, especially since apparently Intel is more conservative with its numbering and Intel 10nm is more comparable to TSMC 7nm. So it's more like TSMC 7nm vs TSMC 5nm, which is not a large enough gap to account for what seems to be at least 1.5X better performance and 3X better power efficiency.

Some of the X86/X64 apologists remind me of old school aerospace companies dissing not only SpaceX and Blue Origin but the whole idea of reusable rockets, trying to convince us that there's little economic advantage in reusing a $100M rocket stage that consumes ~$100-200K in fuel per launch.

"That's not much of a meteorite. It's no big deal." - Dinosaurs