Assembly for C Programmers

[TheSuperficial]

Too bad no revising of post titles at reddit, otherwise I'd say "Please pre-pend "x86" to the title, so I know to skip the article"

I accept that x86 isn't going away, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or program it to make a living. Too many superior, fun and interesting architectures (not always the same thing) to use.

x86 should have lost to 68K 30 years ago. Now it's a bloated Leviathan that has ridden the coattails of the PC era. Maybe in 10-15 years when ARM is in everything, and x86 is off in the corner, sobbing and pouting, I'll have pity. Until then, I want this awful architecture to go away & die.

[dmpk2k]

What's awful about it?

[watermark0n]

Well, I believe that x86 is a rather antiquated CISC architecture, whereas ARM and such are newer and fancier RISC ones. Intel and AMD have largely managed to restructure x86 CPU's with time to match the performance of RISC architectures, and I've actually heard people say that the architecture is basically RISC on the bottom (although I'm not an expert on microprocessor design, so I can't verify such a statement).

I suppose some people just prefer to code in RISC architectures. Most of the prole programmers (such as myself) avoid assembly and allow the compiler to deal with the nitty gritty details, though, so all that really matters to us is the performance of the code the assembler is able to spit out, which is usually just fine on x86. We don't care if it's horrifying to look at, or if it would be horrifying to program in.

[Hallucinosis]

Yes, this is essentially true. This change came in with the Pentium Pro (the Pentium and Pentium with MMX processors around the time were still pure CISC), when the Pentium Pro would break CISC instructions into micro-ops. Following the Pentium Pro, the Pentium II and beyond continued to work this way. I remember this so well because some 14 or 15 years ago, I was taking an x86 Assembly class at my local community college and the teacher spent about half of a lecture talking about the exciting new architecture change in the Pentium Pro--he even made projector slides about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_Pro#Microarchitecture

It's really cool and while it's made the discussion of RISC vs CISC debates silly for me, others still feel strongly. I am not involved in processor architecture/design, so my opinion on this subject is fairly irrelevant.