On 29-07-2018, at 1:50 PM, Eliot Miranda eliot.miranda@gmail.com wrote:
A particular case where this applies is Internet Of Things size devices.
A 16-bit version would be killer. What 16-bit processors are doing well in the market these days, if any?
I don't think there's any need for 16 bit; pretty much all IoT stuff is either ARM (with quite a lot of it using v8 cores because you might as well) or ESP/tensegrity. The ESP32 would run a stack vm ok I suspect, just needing a well trimmed image. The tiny ARM machines could potentially even run a Cog vm when memory allows.
The combination I think would have some value is 32bit oops for '64 bit' machines, ie using the better instruction sets. On ARM it would potentially make a big improvement to run AArch64 code but stay with 32 bit oops. You are of course somewhat at the mercy of your OS to be able to run within a 4Gb address space and not get silly.
tim -- tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Useful random insult:- Trying out for the javelin retrieval team.