logoalt Hacker News

saagarjhatoday at 7:21 AM1 replyview on HN

Well well well “modeless” has decided to finally see the light of modes


Replies

tancoptoday at 10:23 AM

Arm was never modeless. Thumb is a separate encoding with different instruction semantics and Jazelle ran Java bytecode. Both of them need a special branch instruction to enter. What they don't have is legacy modes like real, v8086 or native 16/32 protected that have no reason to exist when a CPU in long mode can run 16 and 32 bit code (in compatibility sub mode) just fine.

show 1 reply