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From: Kai_Henningsen@ms.maus.de (Kai Henningsen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: 64 bit architectures and C
Message-ID: <14707@ms.maus.de>
Date: 3 May 91 13:22:00 GMT
Distribution: world,comp
Organization: Maus Mailbox Netz - UUCP-Gateway Bremen
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Marco S Hyman marc%dumbcat.sf.ca.us @ SUB schrieb am 28.04.1991, 16:33

MS>I hope not -- at least not without some other way of describing a 16-bit
MS>value.  64-bit architecture machines will still have to communicate with
MS>machines that do support 16-bit values.  Swapping bytes between big and
MS>endian machines is bad enough. Think about the overhead of converting a pair
MS>of bytes to a 16-bit value.

Well, use either text or some other machine-independant format. As the name
says, machine-dependant data formats are no good for communication between
heterogenous machines. They never will be. Suppose a machine with 36-bit words
(there are) ...

MS>Hmmm.  How would such a processor communicate with hardware devices
MS>16-bit I/O?  How would a structure that maps an external device's registers
MS>coded if the registers are 16-bits wide?  If there is a way to do these
MS>then a 16-bit wide data type is probably necessary.

Such a processor would deal with such hardware the same way a PC deals with
hardware needing 4- or 12-bit data.

MfG Kai