I never thought that just the registers for AVX-512 were so large compared to L1. (Though some newer chips have 48kb instead of 32). But I think I’m mostly surprised because I hadn’t thought of the size of the register file (which is comparable) when considering renaming.
A story I would have believed was that the instruction set was designed with some useful seeming instructions and a hope that compilers would improve. But it sounds like it was designed much more closely with actual example programs and a compiler, just not the kind that attempts to vectorise scalar code.
Some interesting replies too, eg https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@TomF/110572967731705754
A story I would have believed was that the instruction set was designed with some useful seeming instructions and a hope that compilers would improve. But it sounds like it was designed much more closely with actual example programs and a compiler, just not the kind that attempts to vectorise scalar code.