Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!lib!thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu From: jmaynard@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Segmented Architectures ( formerly Re: 48-bit computers) Message-ID: <4919@lib.tmc.edu> Date: 4 Apr 91 18:35:57 GMT References: <1991Apr04.023845.3501@kithrup.COM> <23615@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> Sender: usenet@lib.tmc.edu Organization: University of Texas Medical School at Houston Lines: 31 Nntp-Posting-Host: thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu In article <23615@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes: >In article <1991Apr04.023845.3501@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: >> <32-bit segment tag> <32-bit offset> >>I defy you to come up with a PROPERLY WRITTEN program that will break. >My pleasure, sir. > DIMENSION BIGMAT(50000,50000) > DOUBLE PRECISION BIGMAT >I have a perfectly legal Fortran declaration; I will never use an >index value bigger than seventeen (signed) bits; there is enough >virtual memory to hold it; and your bozo machine will not permit >me to address it. Survey says: Bzzt! There's nothing that says that array elements in FORTRAN - or, for that matter, C - have to be contiguous. Thinking that that must be true as a matter of Natural Law is purest VAXocentrism. It's the compiler's job to hide those details from the programmer. It's a real tragedy that there ate VAXocentric C programmers out there that think that the whole world should work the way their specific environment does, and write software with lots of hard-to-find nonportabilities lurking to trap the unsuspecting soul who tries to run it on non-VAXen. It's bad enough that I gave serious consideration to buying an 11/750 that's for sale around here just so I could see why people get that attached to it. -- Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can jmaynard@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity. "You can even run GNUemacs under X-windows without paging if you allow about 32MB per user." -- Bill Davidsen "Oink!" -- me