Object oriented design in the first 16-bit processor?

en.wikipedia.org

3 points·gugagore··2 comments

> Intel's first 32-bit microprocessor was the iAPX 432, which was introduced in 1981, but was not a commercial success. It had an advanced capability-based object-oriented architecture, but poor performance compared to contemporary architectures such as Intel's own 80286 (introduced 1982), which was almost four times as fast on typical benchmark tests.

I know that there was OO hype, but 1981 seems kind of early. I also know that OO means many, many things. What does it mean here, if anything?

Wikipedia has a basic overview [0]. Basically, they tried to do what Java did - there is no raw pointers in instruction set, but only special "access descriptors" that always point to a valid object. Microcode handles the rest, like garbage collection, and type checking.

> Each system object has a type field which is checked by microcode, such that a Port Object cannot be used where a Carrier Object is needed. User programs can define new object types...

If there are no microcode bugs, this should theoretically mean full safety and lack of unexpected behavior. But unlike Java with JIT, they were always checking every access - no wonder it turned out to be so slow...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432#Object-oriented...

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