Re: We have only intel to blame
When AMD introduced the AMD64 architecture they remapped the segment registers as general purpose registers because nobody was using them anymore... until Google came up with NaCL (that uses segment registers to provide a hardware sandbox).. intel had a chance (with x86-64) to keep one segment register for hardware security support, but they didn't.
The fact the market leading chip designer chose not to support a kernel segment (in future we'll call that hardware support for operating systems) is down to politics... NSA politics.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
