<story><title>Intel mulls cutting 16 and 32-bit support, booting straight into 64-bit mode</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/25/intel_proposes_dropping_16_bit_mode/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shpx</author><text>I care. I want to learn the entire thing I&amp;#x27;m using, which means I appreciate things that are simpler and faster to learn. You can say I am a stupid or irrational person not worthy of consideration for wanting this but I am who I am and I want to spend money on computers that cater to me.</text></item><item><author>jeffbee</author><text>Yeah but who, other than the person responsible for the firmware that boots the system, cares? These simplifications will have zero observable benefits to you. They won’t save a lot of die space or cost.&lt;p&gt;The complexity of the far past is so small that it is inconsequential today. The PS1 was implemented in spare die area of the PS2’s USB controller. Time marches on and die space becomes free.</text></item><item><author>danudey</author><text>It still blows my mind that a 64-bit i9-13900K with 24 cores, 36 MB of cache, and a turbo speed of 5.8 GHz has to pretend to be a 16-bit 8086, which had a clock speed of 5-10 MHz and was discontinued in 1998, just to properly boot itself.&lt;p&gt;(An exaggerated oversimplification I know, but still)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>citrin_ru</author><text>It very similar to chip die space - modern technologies are so complex that to learn how 8086 works is a very small effort compare to learning how the latest intel CPUs work. And emulation of older generations is a small part of this complexity.</text></comment>
<story><title>Intel mulls cutting 16 and 32-bit support, booting straight into 64-bit mode</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/25/intel_proposes_dropping_16_bit_mode/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shpx</author><text>I care. I want to learn the entire thing I&amp;#x27;m using, which means I appreciate things that are simpler and faster to learn. You can say I am a stupid or irrational person not worthy of consideration for wanting this but I am who I am and I want to spend money on computers that cater to me.</text></item><item><author>jeffbee</author><text>Yeah but who, other than the person responsible for the firmware that boots the system, cares? These simplifications will have zero observable benefits to you. They won’t save a lot of die space or cost.&lt;p&gt;The complexity of the far past is so small that it is inconsequential today. The PS1 was implemented in spare die area of the PS2’s USB controller. Time marches on and die space becomes free.</text></item><item><author>danudey</author><text>It still blows my mind that a 64-bit i9-13900K with 24 cores, 36 MB of cache, and a turbo speed of 5.8 GHz has to pretend to be a 16-bit 8086, which had a clock speed of 5-10 MHz and was discontinued in 1998, just to properly boot itself.&lt;p&gt;(An exaggerated oversimplification I know, but still)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>phendrenad2</author><text>When people say &amp;quot;who cares?&amp;quot; they generally mean &amp;quot;what non-vanishingly-small percentage of people care?&amp;quot; and I think that&amp;#x27;s still an unanswered question!</text></comment>