Philipp Stanner wrote:
As far as I understood the Intel Programmer's Manual the CPUs provide a 16-bit compatibility-mode in 64-bit-long-mode...
Every new CPU comes out of reset in 16-bit mode, just like 8086.
I don't see a reason why it should be impossible to abolish Real Mode, Segmentation and basically everything beside Long-Mode and virtual 32 Bit-mode.
The reason is millions if not billions of MS-DOS systems.
The question is if they benefit from changing x86, making it more modern.
I made this point before:
Compatibility is the only actual value of x86.
So in a word: No.
It can only hurt, potentially making the whole architecture obsolete.
//Peter