Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!cs.uoregon.edu!ogicse!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!percy!littlei!intelhf!ichips!ichips!glew From: glew@pdx007.intel.com (Andy Glew) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: endian etc Message-ID: Date: 13 May 91 10:13:25 GMT References: <2496@cybaswan.UUCP> <3407@spim.mips.COM> Sender: news@ichips.intel.com (News Account) Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon Lines: 21 In-Reply-To: zalman@mips.com's message of 11 May 91 11:13:29 GMT >> Wouldn't it be very easy on a machine with a write back cache >>to copy words simply by changing the internal cached address ( a little >>like a form of cache aliasing). A lot of time is spent in most code >>just copying things around. Would this not improve things ( you gain >>immediately on cache occupancy). > >This is one of many cache tricks you can play to make memory copies (bcopy) >and memory fills (bzero) go fast. Mostly these sorts of things are only >used inside the operating system because they aren't safe for unprivelleged >code to use. One can imagine hardware designed to provide this >functionality for user processes. What sort of associativity? -- Andy Glew, glew@ichips.intel.com Intel Corp., M/S JF1-19, 5200 NE Elam Young Parkway, Hillsboro, Oregon 97124-6497 This is a private posting; it does not indicate opinions or positions of Intel Corp.