Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdurb!aglew
From: aglew@mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: looking for >32-bit address spa
Message-ID: <28200298@mcdurb>
Date: 9 Apr 89 00:43:00 GMT
References: <2569@elxsi.UUCP>
Lines: 20
Nf-ID: #R:elxsi.UUCP:2569:mcdurb:28200298:000:1101
Nf-From: mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM!aglew    Apr  8 19:43:00 1989


>   Elxsi has 32 bit pointers but 64-bit registers.  We originally made
>ints 32 and longs 64, and did manage to port sys V, but it was a real
>pain.  Customers screamed, and we changed to 32 bit longs and 64 bit
>long longs.  Networking code -- both ATT & third party -- is full of
>the 16/32/32 short/int/long assumption.  

Sorry, I can't resist this - things like this reinforce my belief that
the people who put networking into the kernel hacked and kluged (I was
going to say "Were a bunch of XXXX hackers", but that might be unfair.
    They don't even have the excuse of being the first - there were several
preceding implementations, both user and kernel. But I guess they thought
that any dirty trick that might get them a bit faster was worthwhile.

>   HP had a pre-Spectrum project called Beta which had 64 bit registers
>and 64-bit pointers, with 16 bits of segment and 48 bits of offset.  The
>idea was that even the largest databases could be made directly byte 
>addressable.   I don't know how they were going to deal with it in C.

Doesn't C require that a pointer fit into a long?