> Intel/x86 and most/all modern processors implement an abstract machine that's basically made for C, papering over the underlying instruction parallelism and absurdly complex memory model with all kinds of crazy front-end decoder business to allow the CPU to ingest that machine code and pretend like instructions are executed in order, with C-style control flow.
The issue is that none of this has to do with C, really at all. C relies on the semantics exposed by the machine code. The ISA does not expose speculative execution or pipelining. C, and asm, and literally all software conforms to the ISA because that's all there is.
Calling out C specifically is just clickbait, IMO. The author makes a great point about how the x86 ISA may not be a great abstraction for modern CPUs.
As mentioned under the older thread of this same article, many hardware APIs suffer from having to provide a C-compatible interface/memory model. I remember reading that a particular GPU’s elegant memory model was butchered so that C-programmers could do something with it? My memory is hazy on the details though.
The issue is that none of this has to do with C, really at all. C relies on the semantics exposed by the machine code. The ISA does not expose speculative execution or pipelining. C, and asm, and literally all software conforms to the ISA because that's all there is.
Calling out C specifically is just clickbait, IMO. The author makes a great point about how the x86 ISA may not be a great abstraction for modern CPUs.