ARM instruction set has not changed very much at all since then and is in many chips in nearly every device. More are made than any other design.

She is also trans and transitioned in 1990s. Being a cis woman in technology can be frustrating even today. She was a trans woman in UK tech in 1990s.

This is a innovator in technology. Not Jobs, not Musk, not Gates. Wilson created the CPU design which is cheap, simple, efficient, strong, and has become universal today.

    • Eris235 [undecided]
      ·
      4 years ago

      To add onto that, x86 is the 'classic' computer chip, in that most computers and servers run it, and have since like the 80's. x86 has a larger set of instructions, and so is more 'powerful' than ARM. However, having more instructions also means its more complicated. It is usually faster, but needing more electricity, and generating more heat. That's why phones and small electronics have used ARM for years; its more power efficient.

      However, with computers getting faster and faster, and drawing more and more power, we're realizing ARM is actually functionally faster in a lot of situations; that's why Apple just switch all of their main computing line from the 'classic' x86 to ARM. Although the chips are, in a sense, slower, since they produce less heat, you can push them faster, ending up with laptops that are, for the user, faster with lower power draw. However, you have to rewrite all the software to work well on ARM; you can emulate x86 to run older Mac programs on the new ARM macs, but the end result is slower and buggier, so it'll be a bit of a messy transition until all the software is natively written for ARM.

      There's some other stuff that's a little beyond me about the finer points, like with ARM having fewer instructions, its slower because it can need to use 5 instructions to do something x86 only needs one to do, but if you write a program to take full advantage of ARM, and optimize it to do all of the important stuff with only a few instructions, ARM can be faster, as the chips are smaller, and you can fit more into a given space.

      (correct me if I'm wrong here btw, as I have a fairly layman's understanding of the differences)

      • skeletorsass [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Mostly correct. Having a larger set of instructions do not make a CPU faster however. The same operation is being done in each case whether there are 5 or 1 instructions being sent. The instruction just takes multiple cycles on the CISC design. There is a disadvantage to this though, as the 5 instructions could be reordered by the CPU to be more efficient. In modern processors this does not matter though as there are not true CISC processors outside of very slow embedded systems any more, and the modern x86 CPU turns the 1 instruction into 5 internally.

    • TossedAccount [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      If you have an older wireless router, a PS1, PS2, PSP, or N64, it used MIPS, which is an architecture with declining popularity

      Does this explain why N64 emulation is so difficult?