2008/10/8 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Why? Because they've given the reason why they MUST tackle it in > another context: they've refused to implement the latest Javascript > features on the grounds that Chrome must reach the widest possible > audience. Well, by the same logic, they cannot afford to ignore a > very significant CPU architecture.
Chrome needs to support exactly 1 architecture to reach the widest possible audience, and that is x86. PowerPC is currently not used in environments where a desktop browser is relevant, so it is extremely unlikely that the Chrome team has this as any kind of priority. At the same time, all operating systems that support x86-64 support a 32-bit compatibility mode without significant performance impact. The PowerPC architecture is currently only significant in the gaming console market, and this is not a market where Chrome is relevant at all. > Also, I rather doubt that it's a major task to port to PowerPC, given > that V8 already supports two architectures. It may be a major task to > do it as efficiently as for x86, sure, but colossal speed is not a > mandatory requirement when the main goal is to reach the widest > possible audience. Even a noddy third architecture, or fourth after > x86_64, will do. The internal structures needed to support multiple compilation targets are of course in place, but it is _NOT_ trivial to implement codegen for any high level language, for any architecture! So no, this will not happen by itself. :-) It's not really a question of speed, as much as generating code that doesn't segfault half the time. - Simon --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ v8-users mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/v8-users -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
