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Subject: Re: Network stack cloning / virtualization patches
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> A third issue on the x86 is a lack of registers:  There are only 6
> "general purpose" registers (and each of them actually has a specific
> purpose).  Eating one of these registers to maintain a pointer to
> a struct vimage will be a noticable performance hit.

Why not to store it in memory? If the pointer needs to be read often,
there is a high chance that it will be in CPU's data cache. Nowadays
with these huge FSB frequencies reading dword from RAM won't be _much_
slower that reading it from a register anyway.  IMO, experiment is
req'd to see if you will win some performance be freeing a register.
Or am I wrong?

03.06.2003; 21:30:43
[SorAlx]  http://cydem.org.ua/