17 Apr
2018
17 Apr
'18
11:46 a.m.
On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 9:12 AM, allison via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Looked at 8086 and decided it was a 8080 with a bag on
the side.
It was and still is irrational.
With the 386 architecture (32-bit), they actually cleaned it up quite a
bit. I won't go nearly so far as to say that 386 is elegant, but when
running in 32-bit mode with flat addressing it's nowhere near as awful as
16-bit 8086 and 286. AMD did a pretty good job of further extending that
to 64-bit. However, it does keep accumulating ever more bags on the side.
I hope RISC-V eventually drives a stake through it.