The author challenges the common assumption that weakly ordered architectures like ARM and RISC-V are inherently more scalable than strongly ordered ones like x86. The key insight is that most CPUs implement memory ordering optimistically rather than strictly obeying their architectural memory model — only tiny cores or microcontrollers follow the rules to the letter. This means both strong and weak architectures use similar optimization strategies in practice.
Background
The ryg blog by Fernando Giesening is a well-known technical blog covering computer architecture, graphics, and low-level systems programming. This article continues the author's tradition of deep technical analysis of hardware behavior.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- Aug 26, 2026 at 09:32 PM
- Score
- 6.0 / 10