Re: [9fans] compilers - was GUI toolkit for Plan 9

[Mike Haertel <mike@ducky.net>]

>Okay, I'm no compiler writer or even very proficient C coder but all this
>talk of turning optimizations off concerns me. Not because of the threat
>of "badly" generated code but because the chip makers (well Intel is the
>only one I really read about) are pushing the responsibility for
>optimization out of the silicon and into the compiler. (providing I
>understand what I read!)

Intel will live to regret this.  It's one thing to design a processor
that provides support for numerous compiler optimizations; it's quite
another to design a processor that *requires* them *all* to get even
adequate performance on a broad spectrum of code.

Anybody want to port 8c and Plan 9 to the Itanium?

(Ok, you can all stop laughing...)

The idea that "hardware/software co-design" is Good has to rank
among the great fallacies of computer science and the computing
industry in the last two decades.  It may allow elegant solutions
to isolated problems, but problems are never isolated.  Eventually
either the hardware or the software will need to be replaced, and
the more cross-dependencies there are the harder this will be.
Economically it's also really stupid: you are limiting your customers
to the *intersection* of those who like your hardware and those who
like your software.

However they might curse the oddities of the x86 ISA, I am sure the
Plan 9 developers are grateful for the fact that all x86 implementations
are designed with a goal of getting at least adeqaute performance
without recompiling.