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From: quadibloc <quadibloc@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Why I've Dropped In
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2025 01:07:25 +0000
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On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 16:17:21 +0000, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it doesn't have to be too bad:
> e.g. if you reduce register-specifiers to just 4bits for a 32-register
> architecture and kind of "randomize" which of the 16 values refer to
> which of the 32 registers for each instruction, it's fairly easy to
> adjust a register allocator to handle this correctly (assuming you
> choose your instructions beforehand, you simply mark, for each
> instructions, the unusable registers as "interfering"), and the end
> result is often almost as good as if you had 5bits to specify
> the registers.

No doubt this is an intriguing theoretical possibility, but even I would
shrink from inflicting something so bizarre upon programmers and
compiler writers.

John Savard