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Re: Beyond binary compatibility

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In article <cac3b264-37f3-4f29-881d-7a37c8f90d2f@glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com>,
Paul A. Clayton <comp.arch@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>On Thursday, May 19, 2011 12:40:58 PM UTC-4, MitchAlsup wrote:

>I wish (but by no means expect) that ARM, MIPS, and 
>Power.org could join forces and form the Post-RISC 
>Consortium that would develop an ISA (or family of 
>closely related ISAs) which would be open to 
>outside implementation and extension.  The different 
>organizations could target different workloads, 
>different strengths of software development tools, 
>and different licensing styles.  Of course, such 
>would introduce an open market--rather than several 
>somewhat separated markets--which reduces profit 
>margins (which is unattractive even if the total 
>profit increased from customers being less reluctant 
>to buy a product with less lock-in and the benefits 
>of network effects).

Why not go for an intermediate code standard, where
we keep the compiler information to generate code, but
the code can be interpreted as-is; or compiled properly
to the ISA in question. 

Even the various x86 varietes have sufficiently different
performance and ISA variations for this to seem sensible.

>Realistically, even if a PRC was formed, the ISA 
>would probably have enough design-by-committee 
>defects to make it worse than any of the alternatives.
>I would still like to dream that such a limited form 
>of "world peace" could be accomplished, even if I 
>'know' that it is more likely that I will be hired by 
>Intel to work on the next x86 microarchitecture (a 
>probability that is not defined as zero and may even 
>be greater than the probability that a black hole 
>will pass within 1 AU of the sun within the next 20 
>years--or not).

A software format does not require the same level
of involvment by the big corporations.

But, on the other hand, the Open Source environments
have managed to keep up with a large number of
architectures without too much hassle, all things
considered. 

-- mrr

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Re: Beyond binary compatibility "Paul A. Clayton" <paaronclayton@gmail.com> - 2011-05-19 12:54 -0700
  Re: Beyond binary compatibility timcaffrey@aol.com (Tim McCaffrey) - 2011-05-19 21:06 +0000
  Re: Beyond binary compatibility "Ken Hagan" <k.hagan@thermoteknix.com> - 2011-05-20 14:12 +0100
    Re: Beyond binary compatibility "Paul A. Clayton" <paaronclayton@gmail.com> - 2011-06-06 23:32 -0700
      Re: Beyond binary compatibility MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> - 2011-06-07 08:31 -0700
        Re: Beyond binary compatibility "Paul A. Clayton" <paaronclayton@gmail.com> - 2011-06-07 14:58 -0700
      Re: Beyond binary compatibility "Ken Hagan" <k.hagan@thermoteknix.com> - 2011-06-08 10:05 +0100
        Re: Beyond binary compatibility torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2011-06-10 16:00 +0200
  Re: Beyond binary compatibility torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2011-05-23 10:31 +0200
  Re: Beyond binary compatibility Morten Reistad <first@last.name> - 2011-05-29 10:06 +0200
    Re: Beyond binary compatibility George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2011-05-31 12:41 -0400
  Re: Beyond binary compatibility MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> - 2011-05-29 13:20 -0700
    Re: Beyond binary compatibility "Paul A. Clayton" <paaronclayton@gmail.com> - 2011-06-07 00:05 -0700
      Re: Beyond binary compatibility MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> - 2011-06-07 08:22 -0700
        Re: Beyond binary compatibility "Paul A. Clayton" <paaronclayton@gmail.com> - 2011-06-07 15:02 -0700
          Re: Beyond binary compatibility MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> - 2011-06-08 08:41 -0700
          Re: Beyond binary compatibility "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-06-11 09:31 -0700

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