[Libre-soc-dev] Some high-level information about Apple's new M1 SoCs

[whygee at f-cpu.org]

On 2020-12-11 22:21, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> On 12/11/20, Jacob Lifshay <programmerjake at gmail.com> wrote:
<...>
> i was both fascinated and horrified to see that x86 multi issue decode
> has to start decoding instructions from *random byte locations* in the
> desperate hope that, half way through that, some of them will go "ah!
> yippeee! i know the length of this instruction! all youse f*****rs can
> stop wasting power now"
> 
> if they don't do that, instead waiting until the 1st op is fully
> decoded, the length of time it takes is so high that the chances of
> doing multi-issue are absolute zero.
<...>

Just a quick note :
early in the 90s when the Pentium arrived, Intel devised the trick of
storing one bit per instruction byte (in the instr cache) where the
boundary of instructions is encoded.

The first execution "if instr cache miss" decodes 1 instr per cycle,
writes back the instruction stream to cache, then further executions
would be faster, in loops for example.

I suppose this scheme has been adapted since.

But yes, CISC *sigh* ahem.

> l.
yg