Xref: utzoo comp.arch:10391 misc.wanted:5359 comp.sources.wanted:7861
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!sei!firth
From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,misc.wanted,comp.sources.wanted
Subject: Re: MIPS Assembler Procedure
Message-ID: <3571@bd.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 27 Jun 89 12:35:29 GMT
References: <57125@linus.UUCP> <1989Jun24.230056.27774@utzoo.uucp> <22218@winchester.mips.COM>
Reply-To: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 19

In article <22218@winchester.mips.COM> mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) writes:

>6) When we were doing this, we couldn't think of any languages whose
>natural implementation on a 32-bit machine would expect generation
>of a 64 by 32 bit divide as the expected operation.  Does anybody
>know of any such, or is thsi strictly something one would use in
>handcoded routines?

Nope, I don't know of any high-level language either that requires
64/32 => 32,32 division.  For expressions such as (a*b)/c, all 32 bit,
some languages permit the compiler to perform the rule-of-three
operation, ie hold the intermediate product in 64 bits.  Ada is one
such.  But no language requires it.

And, of course, the operation is pretty useless for true 64-bit
arithmetic since there you want a 64-bit quotient.  Performing
full 64/32 => 64,32 on an MC68020, for instance, is pretty tedious
even with the extended division operations, since one has to correct
signs and remainders manually.