Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754748Ab1BMRh7 (ORCPT ); Sun, 13 Feb 2011 12:37:59 -0500 Received: from mail.codesourcery.com ([38.113.113.100]:39746 "EHLO mail.codesourcery.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751155Ab1BMRhx (ORCPT ); Sun, 13 Feb 2011 12:37:53 -0500 Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2011 17:37:50 +0000 (UTC) From: "Joseph S. Myers" X-X-Sender: jsm28@digraph.polyomino.org.uk To: Petr Baudis cc: "H.J. Lu" , Florian Weimer , x32-abi@googlegroups.com, GCC Development , GNU C Library , LKML Subject: Re: X32 psABI status In-Reply-To: <20110213163556.GH13985@machine.or.cz> Message-ID: References: <87aai1gdr7.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de> <4D5711E0.7020306@zytor.com> <87r5bcnwvw.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de> <87tyg8j7le.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de> <20110213163556.GH13985@machine.or.cz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1375 Lines: 29 On Sun, 13 Feb 2011, Petr Baudis wrote: > I think it would be great if you could add some text like this plus some > rationale (AIUI, this is geared mainly at new Atoms and other x86_64 > embedded platforms) to the document. > > (BTW, it is not really convincing to me that such a niche is worth all > the trouble this is going to bring.) It seems to me there's a much more general utility for this. After all, the normal practice on 64-bit Power Architecture GNU/Linux systems, say, is for most programs to be 32-bit and only a few that have a use for a large address space to be 64-bit. For most programs, large pointers and size_t are just a waste of memory (and so of cache) - but the extra registers are significantly beneficial (as are such things as being able to assume SSE to be supported). (Large files, 64-bit time_t, etc., however, are of wider use than large address space, but as I noted in it would be a fairly substantial project to address all such issues of inappropriate arbitrary limits in C APIs.) -- Joseph S. Myers joseph@codesourcery.com -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/