On Tue, Sep 4, 2018, 22:31 Chris McGee, wrote: > > I believe that the core of the problem with the C language is that is >> based upon abstracting the PDP-11 instruction set. CPUs, such as Intel/AMD >> x64 are vastly more complex so "optimising" C compilers are trying to make >> something simple take advantage of something far more complex. Perhaps we >> should call them "complexifying" compilers. >> >> Generally, model-to-model transformations (which is effectively what >> compilers do under the covers) are easier to define when we transform from >> a higher level of abstraction to a lower level of abstraction. As folks in >> the MBSE field explain it, trying to put a pig together from sausages. >> > > I wonder if the hardware world suffers from some of the same complexity > problems the software world does. Is it possible to build much simpler > hardware as well or are there real physical properties that force them to > be as complex as they are now? > Wasn't that the whole point of RISC? >