> Realistically, that sort of thing isn't useful as non-homogeneous architectures really suck for an application or OS to deal with.
replyI agree that if each core doesn't "support" the full ISA it's a huge pain (the one generation of Intel AVX-512-but-not parts were incredible), but that hasn't been common in years. Usually (and in this case, according to my reading) the small cores get a horrible slow/decoder-emulated implementation of every instruction, so that if you schedule on the "wrong" core you don't trap but just run really slowly instead.
Otherwise, heterogeneous architectures are the present and future of mobile and consumer desktops and have been for years. Desktop OSes are getting better and mobile OSes are just fine at scheduling across different core families (the higher level of abstraction everyone complains about in mobile apps actually helps a lot here).
didn't intel discontinue heterogeneous (laptop?) chips recently
replyOnly server, as far as I know. Server is now either high-density E core (Sierra Forest) or low-density P core (Granite Rapids), but desktop and laptop are heterogeneous still; laptops are getting even more heterogeneous because they have P-Cores, E-cores, and Low Power Island cores.
replyAll 10 cores support the same extensions. It’s silly to implement an SoC any other way, and it’s been a decade since someone has last made that mistake.
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