I ran across this fascinating article about the x86 and instruction set architectures (ISAs). It's a good read. The best part about the article is when it describes how modern processors are doing binary translations on instruction sets right before execution (think "just-in-time" compilation.) Because more optimization information is available at run time, these binary translations can result in significant speed improvements even if the executable is already compiled for the correct instruction set. Researchers have gotten up to a 20% increase in speed when optimizing a binary at run time.
Posted by enigma at April 1, 2004 11:54 PM