Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 11:58:23 +1000 From: Patryk Zadarnowski <patrykz@mycenae.ilion.eu.org> To: Mark Ovens <mark@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Intel Merced FreeBSD??? Message-ID: <199908280158.LAA10828@mycenae.ilion.eu.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 28 Aug 1999 02:01:23 %2B0100." <19990828020123.C291@marder-1>
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> On Fri, Aug 27, 1999 at 08:45:31PM -0400, Sergey Babkin wrote: > > Thomas David Rivers wrote: > > > > > Microsoft needs a "business quality" version of Windows, > > > which it claims is Windows/2000. That version of Windows > > > could benefit from a 64-bit port, if for marketing only; but > > > I don't think it would result in the volume of sales Intel > > > is looking for. > > > > A funny thing is that Microsoft is porting essentially a > > 32-bit version of Windows to Merced. All the programs for > > Windows that want to use 64-bit support will have to be > > modified because the MS compiler defines both int and long > > as 32-bit. On the other hand the Unix compilers (at least > > UnixWare and as far as I understood that's the common Unix > > convention) provide a mode with 64-bit longs that gives > > certain degree of 64-bit awareness just by recompiling. I'm yet to see a 64 bit long on a 32 bit OS. It would be brain-dead, IMO, especially as longs are typically assumed to be as fast as ints. However, most Unix programs are (should be?) designed with portability in mind, and that means making no assumptions about sizeof(long). That's what makes porting U*ix to 64 bit so much easier than porting Wheenbloze.... In the later, everyone thinks that they know every petty detail of the architecture, often down to exact values of pointers.. Incidentally, Windows CE has been running on a 64 bit CPU for quite a while (MIPS R4K), although MIPS went out of its way to make R4K 32bit-compatible at least in the userland. Patryk. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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