General-purpose CPUs began as universal Turing machines for running any sort of mathematic calculations automatically. This was done in binary on punch cards and/or with panel cable settings. Then came textual assemblers to make that easier. Imperative procedural programs were then grafted-on to simplify writing assembly rather than in any sort of assembly language.
Most processors have accumulated functionality beyond minimal instructions for the simplification and acceleration of operating system services, hardware interfacing, cryptography, vector & matrix integer and floating-point math, arbitrary precision math, string processing, virtualization (IO and CPU), secure computing, and virtual memory management; just to name a few. :)
A future era of green field development closer to the technological singularity will look across the software-hardware interface boundaries to optimize both silicon (or superconductors) and compilers to generate fast, small, and/or power efficient designs and code without as many limitations. Generative AI and holistic algorithms with enormous computing power will make this possible. It's almost possible now, it's just a few leaps beyond what EDA and compilers are already doing.
Most processors have accumulated functionality beyond minimal instructions for the simplification and acceleration of operating system services, hardware interfacing, cryptography, vector & matrix integer and floating-point math, arbitrary precision math, string processing, virtualization (IO and CPU), secure computing, and virtual memory management; just to name a few. :)
A future era of green field development closer to the technological singularity will look across the software-hardware interface boundaries to optimize both silicon (or superconductors) and compilers to generate fast, small, and/or power efficient designs and code without as many limitations. Generative AI and holistic algorithms with enormous computing power will make this possible. It's almost possible now, it's just a few leaps beyond what EDA and compilers are already doing.