Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Brian Gregory Newsgroups: alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Subject: Re: Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions' and 'start fixing real problems' Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2020 16:11:14 +0100 Lines: 42 Message-ID: References: <1q8s3dvb888t.dlg@v.nguard.lh> <1rqenk95m4on0.dlg@v.nguard.lh> <170720201231335465%nospam@nospam.invalid> <180720200209021165%nospam@nospam.invalid> <180720201157598365%nospam@nospam.invalid> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net dfg9IPaggjEWFZaGfbeqBQx1A38V+wzvcVkZqoCZarpmUzZ6yy Cancel-Lock: sha1:iG0QXmk/6MjxEPuDAJX76+yLHxc= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.10.0 In-Reply-To: <180720201157598365%nospam@nospam.invalid> Content-Language: en-GB Xref: csiph.com alt.comp.os.windows-10:117940 comp.sys.intel:738 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips:2653 On 18/07/2020 16:57, nospam wrote: > In article , Brian Gregory > wrote: > >>>> >>>> We build little computers with parts. Then went to >>>> CPU. All assembly code! >>> >>> that doesn't make any sense. >>> >> >> Tiny CPUs often have tiny instruction sets that aren't well suited to >> any high level language. > > he didn't specify tiny cpus with tiny instruction sets or writing > software for them. > > he said built computers with parts and *then* went to cpus. > > computers built before there were cpus were not little. they were minis > and mainframes, which end users did not build. > >> The first project I did on a PIC16C55 we did in assembler. >> It was not really too difficult. The whole thing fitted on about 3 pages. >> >> We did later get a "C compiler" for those chips but it was pushing it to >> call the language "C". It was mostly the syntax of C but nothing but >> static variables. Weird syntax to configure the chip the way you wanted. >> I can't even remember how you did I/O on it; must have been another >> weird extension to the syntax. It made it easier but not as much as you >> might think. > > in other words, assembly code not needed. > Well not needed yes but that compiler was a bit of a POS and we had to pay quite a lot for it. For that chip it was arguably not worth it for us. However for some of the slightly bigger chips it was definitely worth it. -- Brian Gregory (in England).