Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!watsol.waterloo.edu!tbray
From: tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray)
Subject: Re: Segmented Architectures
Message-ID: <1991Apr6.014113.10084@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: news@watdragon.waterloo.edu (News Owner)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <1991Apr04.234928.8637@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> <1991Apr05.161615.16869@watson.ibm.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1991 01:41:13 GMT
Lines: 15

In article <1991Apr05.161615.16869@watson.ibm.com> oasis@watson.ibm.com writes:
>The only serious complaint I've ever had about how we do segments, is that the 
>segments are too small ...
>Our segments are 256M-bytes

The complaints are serious and they are correct.  256M is too small.  Not
too small sometime, nor pretty soon, nor tomorrow, but today.  In fact, I
suspect the recent brouhaha in this group about segmentation might be
described as converging on a consensus, despite the intemperate language:

 If a computer has a natural N-bit word size, segmentation is OK and
 can make life easier for the OS and compilers, but is more trouble than
 it's worth if the segments are noticeably smaller than 2^N.

Tim Bray, Open Text Systems