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Comment by redraga

I can't comment on the economics of it but I can comment on the technical difficulties. The issue for x86 cores is keeping the ROB fed with instructions - no point in building a huge OoO if you can't keep it fed with instructions.

Keeping the ROB full falls on the engineering of the front-end, and here is where CISC v RISC plays a role. The variable length of x86 has implications beyond decode. The BTB design becomes simpler with a RISC ISA since a branch can only lie in certain chunks in a fetched instruction cache line in a RISC design (not so in CISC). RISC also makes other aspects of BPU design simpler - but I digress. Bottom line, Intel and AMD might not have a large ROB due to inherent differences in the front-end which prevent larger size ROBs from being fed with instructions.

(Note that CISC definitely does have it's advantages - especially in large code foot-print server workloads where the dense packing of instructions help - but it might be hindered in typical desktop workloads)

Source: I've worked in front-end CPU micro-architecture research for ~5 years

parent redraga 6 years ago

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