x86S Specification

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Just saw a mention of a proposal from Intel to produce a simplified
variant of the AMD64/x86-64 architecture, leaving out a whole bunch of
legacy stuff that doesn’t get much use these days.

One of the things proposed for removal is the Ring 1 and Ring 2 privilege
modes.

Does OpenVMS on AMD64 make use of these modes?

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Just saw a mention of a proposal from Intel to produce a simplified
variant of the AMD64/x86-64 architecture, leaving out a whole bunch of
legacy stuff that doesn’t get much use these days.
One of the things proposed for removal is the Ring 1 and Ring 2 privilege
modes.
Does OpenVMS on AMD64 make use of these modes?

My understanding of the proposed changes are:

64 bit OS 64 bit app - works
64 bit OS 32 bit apps - works
32 bit OS 32 bit apps - gone
32 bit OS 16 bit apps - gone
16 bit OS 16 bit apps - gone

VMS x86-64 is 64 bit OS 64 bit apps (the fact that pointers are
often stored with only low 32 bit bit in RAM is irrelevant).

Arne