Maybe the size includes pdf/docx/ppt notes. Maybe there are a few decades of accumulated copy+paste+modify code chunks. Or maybe it really is just complexity -- but at the end of the day that's what matters.
> But the fact is once the boot process has completed there's no longer any reason to refer back
The instruction pointer is hardly the only state here. Doesn't the __SM__ structure (and the mess that came before) cascade into a bunch of configuration? It seems to me that it really could look like keeping a bunch of drivers around.
Or maybe this is a comment on a forum full of people that like to pretend they are experts in any subject at hand, and the author has no idea how big this source code is. Literally.
> But the fact is once the boot process has completed there's no longer any reason to refer back
The instruction pointer is hardly the only state here. Doesn't the __SM__ structure (and the mess that came before) cascade into a bunch of configuration? It seems to me that it really could look like keeping a bunch of drivers around.