WingNews

7373737373|3 months ago

Check out the 5252 pages long "Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual Combined Volumes: 1, 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, and 4" :)

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t...

Direct link: https://cdrdv2.intel.com/v1/dl/getContent/671200

miki123211|3 months ago

Or the ~11k pages long ARM specification.

That's actually two specs in one, both ARM64 and ARM32 are part of this.

aitchnyu|3 months ago

There is a 5000-page standard for Docx I used for a Word export feature. And it was mostly devoid of details and I reverse engineered Word's output files countless times to figure out the actual format. IIRC there was a single 14000-page pdf.

https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st...

godelski|3 months ago

It's been that way for awhile? 4.0 and 5.0 were ~2.8k pages. Even 2.1 is 1420 pages

https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/?types=adopte...

userbinator|3 months ago

All the wireless standards are like that. IEEE 802.11 from 2012 is nearly 2800 pages, and I'm sure the latest version has far exceeded that.

...and the GSM/UMTS/LTE/NR standards are at least an order of magnitude even bigger.

miki123211|3 months ago

If I remember correctly, the entirety of the original GSM is ~9000 pages, things just got crazier (by orders of magnitude) from there.

That's comparing apples to oranges, though. Those standards also specify the interaction between network components, not just between your phone and the network.

Mobile phone standards are more like the entire RFC collection than like the 802.11 specifications.

chithanh|3 months ago

UEFI specification is also over 2300 pages long now. For comparison, Open Firmware (IEEE 1275) was 268 pages.

surajrmal|3 months ago

Things are far more complicated these days vs the 90s. These specifications still seem to lack important details which you notice if you try implementing the spec.

fithisux|3 months ago

It is crazy. It does not make it easy for devs. Imagine this running in a monolithic kernel.

MrBuddyCasino|3 months ago

A lot of it is classic mode, the spec has accumulated a lot of cruft over the years.

m463|3 months ago

wait for the AI-generated version.

childintime|3 months ago

Written by AI?

Sizes like that nicely lock out newcomers from the market, as it can't be entered without a strong financial backing.

surajrmal|3 months ago

You don't need to implement the full spec. Most devices only support the parts relevant to them. Hardware in general is very expensive though so I doubt a very long spec that helps you achieve comparability with existing devices is the thing holding you back.

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