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From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 8086 design goals
Message-ID: <46500064@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 17 May 89 22:01:00 GMT
References: <362@verdix.verdix.com>
Lines: 22
Nf-ID: #R:verdix.verdix.com:362:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:46500064:000:843
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    May 17 17:01:00 1989


>
>>Well, the problem with the Intel architecture is that it was designed for
>>Pascal, whose pointers can only point to heap allocated objects (and no
>>arithmetic on them is allowed).
>
>Leaving aside the question whether the Intel 8086 architecture was
>"designed" for anything, let alone Pascal ...

Why are segments "desirable" for Pascal? I can see why multiple
data segments are undesirable for C, but not why they are DESIRABLE
for Pascal. 

In any case, even if segments were desirable, wouldn't there still
be NO good reason(*) for limiting segments to sizes smaller than the
memory space of the processor? What if a programmer wants to have
most of his address space filled with one big array. An 8086 still
makes a Pascal array larger than 64K a mess.

Doug McDonald

(*) other than simply and truly running out of silicon area?