Why Is Arm A "closed" Instruction Set?

[rahulgarg]

I wonder why ARM does not simply provide manuals without having to go through registration and agreeing to terms and conditions and what not. You can just go to the Intel site and download the x86 instruction set manual. Ditto for Power archiecture. Ditto for Cell's SPE guide. Then why not ARM? Note that ARM does provide some documentation without registration but not all the documentation. For example, I am finding it very hard to find info about the Cortex A8 or the NEON SIMD instructions.

For this reason alone, I support Intel's entry into the embedded space with Atom no matter the good things or shortcomings of the architecture. Any thoughts?

 

[fishybawb]

Not sure if this is any help...

http://pandorawiki.org/Hardware_documentation

Search the Pandora dev forum too, I remember Exophase and Laurent trying to unearth some info a while back. I forget the result.

 

[rahulgarg]

Not sure if this is any help...

http://pandorawiki.org/Hardware_documentation

Search the Pandora dev forum too, I remember Exophase and Laurent trying to unearth some info a while back. I forget the result.



Thanks for the links. Its still a pity though that you have to "uncover" stuff. I do hope ARM at some point realize that their processors are no longer limited to a few corporate developers.

 

[___]

This is stuff that prevents software technology from advancing... Lots of smart hackers are still getting results but it would be so much easier if these documents were available without all the hassle. It's not like they'd lose lots of profit, they are still selling their hardware in the first place.