
What's new in CPUs since the 80s and how does it affect programmers? (2016) - tmearnest
https://danluu.com/new-cpu-features/
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CalChris
No, the 80s were not 8b. The 68000 was 32b. The 8088 used in the IBM PC was
16b and then quickly changed to 32b with the 80386 in the PC/AT. The Apple II
started at 8b but changed to 16b with the IIgs.

I didn't see _superscalar_ mentioned. But I saw some close synonyms; so I'm
good.

However, I didn't see μop caches. The x86 tax is pretty small in 2017 and it
was pretty expensive in the 80s leaving the door open for RISC. That's
definitely missing.

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cameldrv
Not all eight bit, but 32 bit was really more of a nineties thing.

The first 386 PC didn't come out until 1987, but hardly anyone had them until
about 1990. The 68k was a hybrid 16/32 bit processor, and the IIgs didn't come
out until 1987 and hardly anyone bought one.

If you were to go into someone's home or office in 1989 and see how many bits
their computer had, it was overwhelmingly likely to have been 8 or 16.

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dingo_bat
I think the biggest change is that as long as I follow a set of best
practices, I never have to worry about performance. It's always good enough. I
can spin up 5 docker containers with a copy of my program running in each, on
my 4 year old laptop, and performance is still not an issue.

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godelmachine
Adrian Colyer had recommended this in one of his posts.

