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by adfgionionio
1135 days ago
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The decoders are largely irrelevant. All modern x86 machines use a uop cache. The large majority of instructions hit in this cache and do not need to hit the decoders at all. As a result, the decoders can spend much of their time shut down. You already have four-ish decoders that are idle most of the time; why do you want eight-ish decoders that are idle nearly all the time? No one would design an ISA like x86 these days. It definitely does use more power and more die area than strictly needed. It definitely does reduce performance in some applications. It definitely did take heroic engineering efforts to make x86 work well. But, all told, it just doesn't matter very much. |
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