x86S

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Aeneas
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Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2009 10:09 pm

x86S

Post by Aeneas »

Hi everyone,

Transitioning to 64 bit may indeed become more of a topic in the not too far away future — look at this:

https://www.techspot.com/news/98773-int ... cient.html

Unless, of course, one is fine with this being a "VM only OS", as likely will be the fate of FreeDOS. (In which, by the way, there is no "shame", and which would likely greatly simplify all hardware/driver affairs.)
Elledan
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Re: x86S

Post by Elledan »

To be honest, X86-S seems more like an Itanium 2 to me. Another clear cut with x86? What real benefit does this bring, and why would AMD be interested in jumping off that particular cliff along with Intel?
Aeneas
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Re: x86S

Post by Aeneas »

Simplification of instructions, faster execution and cheaper chips.

Itanium is incomparable - Intel sought "to force the industry" (and previously with the Intel iAPX 432, originally called 8800 in reference to 8080 and 8008, the "stopgap" to which being the 8086, and the rest is history), whereas now, it follows the industry, meaning: BIOS systems get rarer and rarer, and UEFI-based systems cannot natively boot old OSes anyway. So if the chip itself loses support for bare-metal-operation of these ancient OSes... nobody will notice. For those who need them: Performance gains have advanced so far that modern emulations of ancient systems now run faster than the ancient systems ever did on real hardware.

ReactOS can in the mid-future either try to advance its 64bit-conversion - or just declare itself a virtual OS. (Heck, maybe even employ some mini-Linux as virtualizer, and as sort of "firmware", if it were thus desired. It's not something people don't do, down to washing machines... EDIT: for the purists: UEFI itself is a sort of mini-OS, so this way or that, one goes such a route...)
MadWolf
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Re: x86S

Post by MadWolf »

Aeneas wrote: Wed May 31, 2023 9:00 am Simplification of instructions, faster execution and cheaper chips.

Itanium is incomparable - Intel sought "to force the industry" (and previously with the Intel iAPX 432, originally called 8800 in reference to 8080 and 8008, the "stopgap" to which being the 8086, and the rest is history), whereas now, it follows the industry, meaning: BIOS systems get rarer and rarer, and UEFI-based systems cannot natively boot old OSes anyway.
depending on the UEFI firmware you can use Legacy bios to boot older versions of the operating systems then the problem is can you get drivers for the hardware
dark
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Re: x86S

Post by dark »

Aeneas wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 8:49 pm

Unless, of course, one is fine with this being a "VM only OS", as likely will be the fate of FreeDOS.
Oh, I've seen it being used on factory floors with new PCs (whether it was MSDOS or FreeDOS, I don''t know). There's always a company that refuses to pay for updating their software.
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