This is just a nitpicking question. Do Intel chips still have some space/transistors dedicated to SSE3? If they do, why can’t they implement SSE3 by other, more powerful instrutions (like AVX) to save die space?
This is just a nitpicking question. Do Intel chips still have some space/transistors dedicated to SSE3? If they do, why can’t they implement SSE3 by other, more powerful instrutions (like AVX) to save die space?
Modern x86 chips are so large that the space the decoder takes is relatively small.
It would be a different story if you wanted a tiny cheap low power chip. Then you might be better off with ARM or RISC-V.
The way x86 instructions are variable length and not self-synchronizing means that you can see up to 15% of your core’s power budget go to decode if you aren’t running in the small cache of decoded instructions, at least a few generations ago when last I heard. That isn’t huge but it does mean that x86 architects have to put thought into how wide to make it, they can’t just size it to make sure it’s never a bottleneck like ARM designers can.
Mate, the 90s were a few decades back. ;-)
x86 decoding hasn’t been a limiter since then.
https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter/