2 Jan
2009
2 Jan
'09
11:52 a.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Fred Cisin wrote:
There is actually a Windows hardware accelerator, which speeds things up
massively. Having only four opcodes, it's very easy to program:
MSB - Make Screen Blue
DMH - Display Memory as Hex, optionally with cryptic messages
HLT - Halt until a key is pressed, then reset
SOD - Scribble On Disk, just in case any data managed to be written out
before the crash.
Although the microcode behind these instructions is quite complex, the
simple instruction set makes it easy for the end user to use.
One added advantage is that having only four opcodes makes it ideally
suited to two-bit architectures.
Gordon
For that matter (sorry for the mass indigestion),
surely Intel is
studying
and doing massive statistical analyses of the relative frequency of
different instructions
Presumably - I expect this is common practice for all CPU manufacturers
(and what I believe fed the first RISC designs way back when)
If their data is real world, then such
optimizations would ultimately result in creation of processors that are
specifically optimized for the weirdities of Windoze!
Multiple types of halt instruction, you mean?