From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <463D7DDE.6060402@conducive.org> Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 15:03:58 +0800 From: W B Hacker User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070221 SeaMonkey/1.1.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] speaking of kenc References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: 5c2026be-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 Rogelio Serrano wrote: *snip* > > actually its not hard to create a processor that is generic enough > that it does not need assembly and is not locked to any target > language. > Actually it is damned hard to create a processor that *is* 'locked' to any language more complex than high/low/tristate tables. I'd dare say 'couldn't be done' were it not for Pershing's quote. What it *does* with those states, is of course what we have come to call an 'instruction set', if that is what you really meant by 'language'. And there are such - including some x86 compatibles - where portions of that can be altered without a major fab change. For most use, the trend has been exaclty the other way. Folks prefer a guaranteed-stable environment, even if it is a suboptimal one (x86 'compatibility' again). Mostly it is about costs - not 'elegance' or convenience for the coder. We've got to 'eat what is on our plate'. Bill