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Comment Re:exactly (Score 3, Informative) 605

Individually they aren't too bad. Taken all together they create real problems.

64 predicate registers (which is way too many) yields 6 bits per syllable (the Itanium term for instruction). Combine that with 128 int regs (7 bits per) and 3 register operands - you've got 27 bits before specifying any instruction bits.

The impact of the middle one (instruction steering) was also not seen until late in the design cycle. Instruction decode information got mixed in there, so that not every instruction could go to every position. This led to a large number of NOPs inserted into the instruction stream. The final code density for Itanium was significantly lower than RISC (and way under x86).

These factors also work against out-of-order implementations - but there were organizational impediments to that happening anyway...

Comment Re:It will (Score 1) 605

What time frame do you have in mind? When Itanium was first developed, you could barely fit one of that in the reticle (max die size). It wasn't until later that we started having multiple core on a die.

Comment ISA doesn't matter (Score 1) 605

As much as people like to dig on x86, ISA simply doesn't matter. The benefits of programmer familiarity and tools infrastructure (not to mention installed base and compatibility) dwarf any possible technical advantage (of which there are few)

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