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Show HN: Go Plan9 Memo

(pehringer.info)
302 points pehringer | 4 comments | 18 Oct 24 14:36 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

A quick dive into the Plan9 assembly I picked up while developing my SIMD package for Go, and how it led to a 450% performance boost in calculations.
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rob74 ◴[18 Oct 24 15:23 UTC] No.41880278[source]▶
In case it's not obvious, the "Plan 9" in the Go Assembler's name comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs, and the reason for that is of course that two of the "Go founders" (Rob Pike and Ken Thompson) are Bell Labs alumni. Some more background on the Go assembler: https://go.dev/doc/asm
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colechristensen ◴[18 Oct 24 15:31 UTC] No.41880349[source]▶
The same people used the same name for two computer related projects.

That's certainly an ... interesting choice.

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lloeki ◴[18 Oct 24 15:46 UTC] No.41880498[source]▶
It is, essentially, the same project. Plan9 is the umbrella term for the whole operating system.

https://plan9.io/sys/doc/comp.html

IIRC before Go was self compiling, it was compiled using 9c, and its architecture inherits from 9c.

EDIT: some nearby threads got the details better!

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colechristensen ◴[18 Oct 24 15:58 UTC] No.41880619[source]▶
Interesting trivia about the connection to plan9 the operating system.

>Go uses its own internal assembly language called Plan9.

Plan9 is the name of the OS. You wouldn't name a programming language "Linux", even if Linus created it and it was super related or not at all related.

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1. seryoiupfurds ◴[18 Oct 24 16:31 UTC] No.41880972[source]▶
It's not "plan9 assembly language" as in "the assembly language named plan9". Read it as "the otherwise unnamed custom assembly language used in the plan9 operating system".

The article simply misspoke by saying that the assembly language is "called plan9".

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2. debugnik ◴[18 Oct 24 18:20 UTC] No.41882052[source]▶
No way, the article consistently refers to the assembler syntax as "Plan9" throughout the text and title and they talk about "x86 Plan9" and "arm Plan9".

Considering there is no introduction at all to this beyond "I discovered it's called Plan9", I'm assuming the author really thinks this is a language widely named "Plan9".

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3. KerrAvon ◴[18 Oct 24 18:31 UTC] No.41882147[source]▶
They seem to be badly mistaken
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4. sph ◴[18 Oct 24 20:34 UTC] No.41883226{3}[source]▶
That seems to be the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41880346