From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jul 13 03:05:12 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A3E7CC8; Sat, 13 Jul 2013 03:05:12 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lidl@pix.net) Received: from hydra.pix.net (hydra.pix.net [IPv6:2001:470:e254::3c]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 255DA1DD6; Sat, 13 Jul 2013 03:05:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: from torb.pix.net (torb.pix.net [IPv6:2001:470:e254:10:12dd:b1ff:febf:eca9]) (authenticated bits=0) by hydra.pix.net (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id r6D35BdB083045; Fri, 12 Jul 2013 23:05:11 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from lidl@pix.net) X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Virus-Scanned: clamav-milter 0.97.8 at mail.pix.net Message-ID: <51E0C3E7.7000503@pix.net> Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 23:05:11 -0400 From: Kurt Lidl User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130620 Thunderbird/17.0.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Adrian Chadd Subject: Re: Adding a MACHINE_ARCH note References: <51E06B85.10109@pix.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 03:05:12 -0000 On 7/12/13 7:02 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote: > On 12 July 2013 13:48, Kurt Lidl wrote: >>> It seems to be driven by Intel and Google. The idea is that for some >>> applications (or maybe even most :), an ILP32 model will perform better. >> >> >> I believe that Google's NaCl (native client) plugins for Chrome all use >> the "x32" ABI. The NaCl stuff uses this, along with a "safe" code >> generation path to implement part of the sandboxing for Chrome plugins. >> >> Ultimately, to have a fully functioning Chrome (with plugins) on amd64 >> hosts, we'll want to support "x32". > > Does this mean that netbooks with only 32 bit CPUs in them won't support NaCl? > (Ie, they're only ever going to generate x32 code, and even 32 bit > machines will still run 64 bit assembly..) I don't think so. If you grovel through the NaCl stuff, you have to gen bit 32-bit x86, as well as x32 mad64 stuff, and they encourage ARM too. It's a shifting landscape, and they are now working on some intermediate PNaCl (portable), which smells like LLVM's IR code that they can convert to your native ISA at runtime. -Kurt