rwessel (rwessel.delete@this.yahoo.com) on March 21, 2021 5:05 am wrote:
> anon2 (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on March 21, 2021 4:52 am wrote:
> > anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on March 21, 2021 3:22 am wrote:
> > > Hugo Décharnes (hdecharn.delete@this.outlook.fr) on March 20, 2021 7:34 am wrote:
> > > > Having programs delivered in annotated, intermediate representation (IR) would be great. When compiled
> > > > to a specific ISA, removing instructions is impossible, while adding new ones does not benefit the already
> > > > compiled programs.
> > >
> > > I think you are a bit late to the party. Software has been distributed using IR and then
> > > compiled/JITed on the target machine for over two decades now... just look at Java and
> > > .NET applications. And even if you counter that it's something different as these target
> > > a virtual machine rather than the "real" hardware, here are some other examples:
> > >
> > > - Compiled GPU shaders on virtually every platform
> > > - Apple has been distributing iOS software as LLVM bytecode since 2015
> > > - WASM
> >
> > Over 3 decades with OS/400.
>
>
> S/38 shipped in 1978.

Ah true, so 4 decades now. As far as I know, they switched to a quite radically different architecture (PowerPC) albeit with some added hardware features to improve performance of the result (although these may have been less about the shipped intermediate code in general, and more about the specific single address space nature of the system.

Reminds me of the old quote "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

Also applies to software and hardware designers of recent few decades when they learn more about the discoveries and accomplishments of the earlier years.