from Hacker News

The x86 architecture is the weirdo, part 2 (2022)

by usmannk on 4/19/22, 10:39 PM with 1 comments

  • by gwoplock on 4/19/22, 11:10 PM

    X86 and by extension x64 is weird for reasons even beyond what he talks about.

    One weirdness I've hated is the layout of interrupt and segment descriptors. For interrupts the address is broken into a lower and upper half on either end of the structure, not ideal but workable. Segments on the other has 3 different places for the base and 2 different places for the 2.5 byte limit.

    It's insanity to try and build the descriptors.