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> Ensuring a code base indefinitely supports arbitrary architectures carries a substantial code architecture cost.

I'd say just the opposite; it nudges you towards well-factored approaches and ultimately carries a code architecture benefit, just like having automated tests or using structured programming.

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For a relatively small set of dimensions this is true. But the more abstractions the code needs to accommodate, the trickier and more prone to leaky abstractions it becomes. Removing one axis of complexity can be incredibly helpful.

For the Ardour codebase (922k LoC at present, ignoring the vendored GTK/Gtkmm trees), we've found that every new architecture and new OS/platform that we've ported to has thrown up challenges and notably improved the code. That has included FPU/SIMD specializations too.

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