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by threshold 1739 days ago
Why is X86 disgusting?
2 comments

It's a matter of taste, but x86 has a lot of historical cruft because it's been around long enough to see 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit industry transitions. Off the top of my head, x86 memory segmentation and fragmentation between BIOS vs. UEFI and ACPI vs. the absence of device trees (AFAIK).
But it is kinda cool to run software that originally was built for the 8088 on an AMD Threadripper. But yes, I do agree the x86 architecture is fast losing its lustre.
Ugly ugly ugly ISA. We throw away a little bit of performance and a lot of power because of how weird and old it is.