Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!udel!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!PLAY.MACH.CS.CMU.EDU!bsy
From: bsy@PLAY.MACH.CS.CMU.EDU (Flexi-thumbs)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: RT/PC Unaligned Accesses
Message-ID: <4646@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 89 22:23:47 GMT
References: <4618@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <oYBLMhy00jaRA1ZlFZ@andrew.cmu.edu> <4628@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <28664@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Cranberry Melon
Lines: 17

In article <28664@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jas@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Jim Shankland) writes:
]....  Consider the following reductio ad
]absurdum:
]
]My new processor does not fault on data references beyond the bounds
]of a process's address space; instead, it silently reads random data.
]This saved me a hunk of silicon.  Correct programs still run correctly;
]only programs that dereference wild pointers get into trouble, and
]those are broken anyway.

I'm not arguing that the RT is a great machine... but you might as well say
use your reductio argument for the BSD Vax implementation -- NULL pointers
are too often dereferenced:  correct programs still run correctly; only
programs that dereference NULL gets into trouble (when ported to a Sun, for
example), and those are broken anyway....

-bsy
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