10 ms·

I've always thought: All possible abstraction removed = bare metal

• ChrisSD 6y ago
  On x86/64 only the CPU vendors go down to that level. Well them and security researchers.
  • makapuf 6y ago
    Would you exclude compiler/assembler developers ? Are they not using the bare chip capabilities? Is assembly an abstraction ?
    • pjmlp 6y ago
      On micro-coded CPUs Assembly is indeed an abstraction, because that is not what the CPU is running, hence why many mainframe manuals refer to Assembly as bytecode. On x86/x64, the chips have long migrated to an internal RISC like architecture, with an Assembly => micro-op translation step on the decoding unit.
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Is assembly an abstraction ? Yes, assembly is an (mostly fairly thin, on non-microcoded hardware) abstraction over machine code.
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      Assembly is an abstraction, as the others have mentioned, but many compiler people are aware of this as it affects performance.