Path: utzoo!dciem!array!colin From: colin@array.UUCP (Colin Plumb) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: 64 bits--why stop there? Message-ID: <631@array.UUCP> Date: 28 Aug 90 19:40:45 GMT References: <6106@vanuata.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <2437@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <3259@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1990Aug23.015636.506@portia.Stanford.EDU> Organization: Array Systems Computing, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA Lines: 12 In article meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) writes: > IMHO, the 64 bit machine should represent all addresses in bits, not > bytes (and yes this will probably break those programs which do int > arithmetic on pointers -- but those are probably in the miniority). > Before people lynch me, let me explain, that I think that the > addresses that are not appropriately aligned should trap. Strong agreement. There's something fundamentally ugly about byte addressing when the bit is the "true" least addressible unit. The fact that we've gotten used to it (e.g. the bitfield kludge in C) doesn't necessarily make it good. -- -Colin