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by znpy 230 days ago
You’re conveniently skipping the part where x86 can run software from 40 years ago but arm can drop entire instruction sets no problem (eg: jazelle).

Had been arm so weighted by backwards compatibility i doubt it would be so good as it is.

I really think intel/amd should draw a line somewhere around late 2000 and drop compatibility with stuff that slow down their processors.
1 comments
le-mark 230 days ago
> jazelle

That’s a blast from the past; native Java bytecode! Did anyone actually use that? Some J2ME phones maybe? Is there a more relevant example?

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hmry 229 days ago
> Did anyone actually use that?

AFAIK you needed to pay a license fee to write programs using Jazelle instructions (so you needed to weigh whether the speedup of Jazelle was cheaper than just buying a more powerful CPU), and the instruction set itself was also secret, requiring an NDA to get any documentation (so no open source software could use it, and no open toolchains supported it).

I remember being very disappointed when I found out about that

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