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From: edler@cmcl2.UUCP (Jan Edler)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Orthogonal addressing doesn't help multis.
Message-ID: <482@cmcl2.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Jun-85 19:55:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: cmcl2.482
Posted: Wed Jun 19 19:55:25 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Jun-85 01:27:25 EDT
References: <419@oakhill.UUCP> <6415@boring.UUCP>
Reply-To: edler@cmcl2.UUCP (Jan Edler)
Organization: New York University
Lines: 14
Summary: doesn't help uniprocessors either

I was also going to post something along these lines, but didn't get around
to it.  But there was another point I wanted to make, so I'll make it now:
Even if you have a uniprocessor with instructions like add-to-memory,
and those instructions are atomic with respect to interrupts,
it is probably not possible to take advantage of this property when
writing in a language other than assembly.  The programmer would not generally
know when the "atomic" instructions would be used, and when the compiler
might optomize them away, so he/she wouldn't be able to depend on them.


	Jan Edler
	New York University
	cmcl2!edler
	edler@nyu