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Message-ID: <19971221184811.36599@lemis.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 18:48:11 +1030
From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To: Jason Evans <jasone@canonware.com>
Cc: "Robert S. Sciuk" <rob@ControlQ.com>,
        Oliver Fromme <olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de>,
        freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Data types (was: Re: FAQ FreeBSD-Sparc [frequent posting])
References: <Pine.UW2.3.96.971217112456.2479J-100000@fatlady.controlq.com> <Pine.BSF.3.96.971217094115.7374n-100000@paladio>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971217094115.7374n-100000@paladio>; from Jason Evans on Sat, Dec 20, 1997 at 11:40:55PM -0800
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On Sat, Dec 20, 1997 at 11:40:55PM -0800, Jason Evans wrote:
>
> As for the UltraSPARC, I've been having a hard time finding info on the
> efficiency of 32 vs 64 bit integer operations.  This is of course an
> issue, but I think that industry standards should take precedence over the
> particulars of the UltraSPARC in this decision, simply because FreeBSD
> could be an oddball otherwise.
>
> ...
>
> I've read through these web pages, as well as following the discussion
> that ensued here.  My feeling is that we should go with LP-64 (char --> 8,
> short --> 16, int --> 32, long --> 64, pointer --> 64).  This seems to me
> the most useful from a programming perspective, and it also appears to be
> the up and coming standard way of doing things.  Like I said before, we
> wouldn't be throwing away functionality by choosing this.

This sounds like a good a priori approach, though it will cause
problems where people assume sizeof (int) == sizeof (void *).  But
surely you should be able to find somebody under the Sun umbrella who
can tell you what Solaris is planning to do for the UltraSPARC.  I
suppose this would apply to the question of register saving too.

Greg