“We humans have many odd traits, one of them being that if we
own a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail; we do
structured programming and graphics in our beloved PERL, and use
the One True C++ for web scripting. So also with processors: rather
than design a powerful and appropriate mobile CPU, we tend to strap
a supercharger to an ARM processor or try to shoehorn a modified
(gelded) Athlon in under the laptop keyboard.
This is often a Very Bad Thing. For example, many of the
barnacles in Athlon and Coppermine architecture, which bloat and
slow down software, are there because these latest, greatest
‘flagchips’ are compatible with a Pentium, which is compatible with
486, with 386, with 286, with 8086, which is concept-compatible
with 8080, derived from 4040, 8008 and 4004 – processors whose
transistors you can almost see, and whose clock is only just
supersonic.”
“Crusoe is not just a low-power processor running an
emulator: it is designed from the ground up to emulate. Think
of native mode as programming in microcode, the secret internal
language of processors. Today, it can be a Pentium. Soon, no doubt,
a PowerPC; who knows what else eventually? As a developer, I’m real
happy with the idea of prototyping on my own system, then just
pushing it across to my target system and running it. ‘No huhu,’ as
a bloke named Mycroft Holmes IV once said.”