Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!sco!seanf
From: seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 64 bits
Message-ID: <1951@scolex>
Date: 20 Dec 88 09:56:21 GMT
References: <28200249@mcdurb> <451@babbage.acc.virginia.edu>
Reply-To: seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan)
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Lines: 20

> It's long past time that computer systems - compilers and/or
> ALUs - supported >32 bit integers. 64 bits here we come!

Well, Crays are 64-bit machines, as are Elxsis (nice machine that looks a
bit like a 64-bit VAX; everybody should buy one 8-)).  Cybers (my favorite
machines 8-)) are 60-bits in 170-state, and 64-bit in 180-state.  The SPARC
has support, it looks like, for 64- and 128-bit quantities.

The code generator for gcc has support for 64-bit and, I think, 128-bit
objects (actually, the objects can be any length you want; it does, however,
have support for being able to have char, short, int, long, and long long),
if I remember correctly.  All you have to do, if you're porting it, is
describe the instructions that use the correct mode(s).

Then there's the Connection Machine:  64k-bit objects.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "Merry Christmas, drive carefully and have some great sex."
seanf@sco.UUCP   |     -- Art Hoppe
(408) 458-1422   | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.