Game Boys, bears, baseball

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • No argument there. It’s also why it’s done in ARM, 8080, SM83, z80, 6502, and basically every other assembly language. It’s only not done in RISC-V because you can fold 0 into any instruction as an operand, therefore eliminating the need to clear a register before an instruction.

    So why correct the person with a more narrow claim that makes it seem like xor being faster than loading zero is a rarity in CPU architectures? If I said “birds can fly”, and your response was “eagles can fly. Ftfy. Not all birds can fly”, it would be both true and utterly unhelpful.








  • Perhaps unauthorized is a better word than counterfeit. The manufacturing process for CPUs often yields less than ideal chips. Perhaps they don’t hit the clock speed they’re supposed to, or maybe they consume too much power. Those chips are supposed to be discarded, but they often find their way to the black market. Sometimes those chips aren’t even failures. If a fab overproduces, they’re not just going to give Apple the extra chips. These are the things Apple worries about, and they view it as far less likely to happen if those chips are made in the US.

    I should also point out that the CPU isn’t the only chip that TSMC makes for Apple. Apple wants to make sure they’re getting a cut of every replacement part that gets sold. You can’t even swap screens on two brand new iPhones without Apple giving you a hard time.