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ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

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Re: ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

#181

Post by erosenbe0 »

Joker_vD wrote: post #76
secondcoming wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing justifies the prolonging of Javascript torture.

Nothing justifies the prolonging of C torture either, except of the C's wide spread. Why do you think modern CPUs still expose mostly C-abstract-machine-like interface instead of their actual out-of-order, pipelined, heterogeneous-memory-hierarch-ied internal workings?

Well it turned out that for running scalar code with branches and stack frames exposing too much to the compiler was not helpful, especially as transistor budgets increased. So as long as we program with usual functions and conditionals this is what we have.

I can swap out a cpu for one with better IPC and hardware scheduling in 10 minutes but re-installing binaries, runtime libraries, drivers, firmware to get newly optimized code -- no way. GPU drivers do this a bit and it's no fun.

Re: ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

#182

Post by cortesoft »

dis-sys wrote: post #175
bitcoinmoney wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue a solid 1-2% can get you a promotion in HW companies. You put 5 of this improvements and that’s a generational improvement.

1-2% for a single language at the cost of polluting an entire instruction set.

What is the cost of this pollution?

I am genuinely curious, I don't know much about instruction set design.

Re: ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

#183

Post by Stevvo »

cortesoft wrote: post #182
dis-sys wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1-2% for a single language at the cost of polluting an entire instruction set.

What is the cost of this pollution? I am genuinely curious, I don't know much about instruction set design.

I guess it's however many bytes the instruction occupys in L1 cache.

Re: ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

#184

Post by saagarjha »

Stevvo wrote: post #183
cortesoft wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the cost of this pollution? I am genuinely curious, I don't know much about instruction set design.

I guess it's however many bytes the instruction occupys in L1 cache.

The pollution would be in the chip complexity.

Re: ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

#185

Post by Dylan16807 »

dialamac wrote: post #150
Joker_vD wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing justifies the prolonging of C torture either, except of the C's wide spread. Why do you think modern CPUs still expose mostly C-abstract-machine-like interface instead of their actual out-of-order, pipelined, heterogeneous-memory-hierarch-ied internal workings?

> Why do you think modern CPUs still expose mostly C-abstract-machine-like interface I don’t think that, because they don’t. Your premise is hogwash. Modern RISC derived CPUs for the most part expose a load store architecture driven by historical evolution of that micro arch style and if they are SMP a memory model that only recently has C and C++ adapted to with standards. Intels ISA most assuredly was not influence…

> Also you might want to look into VLIW and the history of Itanium for an answer to your other question.

There's only one question. What do you mean?

But Itanium wasn't out of order. How does that even come close to answering a question about exposed out-of-order machinery?

Re: ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

#186

Post by anaganisk »

barnacled wrote: post #166

It strikes me as ironic that an architecture that used to pride itself on being RISC and simple is heading in the same direction as intel-levels of masses of specialist instructions. I don't mean this as a criticism, I just wonder if this is really the optimum direction for a practical ISA

May be as the time increases the threshold for being a RISC increases as the tech advances?

Re: ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

#188

Post by Dylan16807 »

Someone wrote: post #134
scottlamb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With variable length instructions one must decode a previous one to figure out where the next one will start. People said the same thing about text encodings. Then UTF-8 came along. Has anyone applied the same idea to instruction encoding?

That would eat precious bits in each instruction (one in each byte, if one only indicates ‘first’ or ‘last’ bytes of each instruction). It probably is better to keep the “how long is this instruction” logic harder and ‘waste’ logic on the decoder.

If you want to be able to decode a bunch of instructions in parallel you really want it to be simple.

You don't have to make it self-synchronizing like utf-8, but a prefix length encoding is a real asset.

Re: ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

#189

Post by franklampard »

dis-sys wrote: post #175
bitcoinmoney wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue a solid 1-2% can get you a promotion in HW companies. You put 5 of this improvements and that’s a generational improvement.

1-2% for a single language at the cost of polluting an entire instruction set.

One of the most popular and fastest growing languages

Re: ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name

#190

Post by leptons »

antonvs wrote: post #172
goldenManatee wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time I thought the JS hate was just a friendly pop jab. From working with backend folks I’ve realized it comes from at least a somewhat patronizing view that JS should feel more like backend languages; except it’s power, and real dev audience, is in browsers, where it was shaped and tortured by the browser wars, not to mention it was created in almost as many days as Genesis says the world was built.

So, there are excuses for Javascript's terribleness, but that doesn't stop it from being objectively terrible.

And that's your opinion. I find javascript quite enjoyable and easy to use, without producing errors. YMMV.
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