On 19 June 2012 23:59, deadalnix <deadalnix@gmail.com> wrote:

Le 19/06/2012 22:08, Iain Buclaw a écrit :

From what I gathered from further discussion, it made sense for
embedded platforms, such as ARM, but not x86.

It has proven to be useful to me, not only for performances reasons, but also for low level manipulations.

It don't see what make ARM that different on regard to inline assembly capabilities.

If you had the register alias feature I described above, would you be ale to write such low-level manipulations using intrinsics?

I think I would be able to rewrite all x86 asm blocks I've ever written using that feature.

ARM and PPC both have unique features relating to their branch control and branch prediction that x86 doesn't have. Sadly, all high level languages COMPLETELY overlook such features when designing high level expressions, because they are traditionally designed for x86 first.

A thorough set of intrinsics can allow access to these features though, although since they're related to branch control/conditional execution, it feels clumsy, since you lose the feeling of structured code; ie, no scoped if blocks, loop constructs, etc, if you have to use intrinsics to generate conditions or masks.

ARM is the most common architecture on earth now. It would be nice if D were able to take better advantage of the architecture.