From mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi Sat Dec 19 18:26:58 2009 X-SourceIP: 77.249.76.7 Message-ID: <4B2D60D6.7040807@chello.nl> Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:25:10 +0100 From: Henk Robbers User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (Macintosh/20050317) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: mint@lists.fishpool.fi Subject: Re: [MiNT] mshort support References: <4B2CAA08.9030902@freesbee.fr> <20091219120409.dcb439df.mandin.patrice@orange.fr> <4B2D307C.8000509@freesbee.fr> In-Reply-To: <4B2D307C.8000509@freesbee.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi Errors-to: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi X-original-sender: h.robbers@chello.nl Precedence: bulk List-help: List-unsubscribe: List-Id: X-List-ID: List-subscribe: List-owner: List-post: Vincent Rivière wrote: > My very personal opinion: > I would prefer to get rid of mlong and keep only mshort. > The manipulation of 32-bit integers is slower on 68000 than 16-bit ones. > I don't want artificially slow programs on my ST. I don't want to have > to call a slow function to compute 3*5. And I don't care about Unix > software, I will never use them on ST. > Exactly how I feel about it. > On ColdFire, it is the opposite. The instructions behave optimally on > aligned 32-bit values, manipulation of 16-bit values usually requires > more instructions. I don't want a 16-bit kernel on my future ACP computer. > Sensible. > Now back to the reality. > We need 32-bit support because most software from the outside world > require 32-bit integers. Including the MiNTLib (based on glibc). And as > you said, everything in our OS use 16-bit integers. We will probably > have to live with that. TOS only uses trap 1,2,13 & 14 Create new traps for complete 32 bit API's. trap 3 for GEMDOS trap 4 for AES/VDI trap 11 for BIOS trap 12 for Xbios Exercise in Emutos. Programs have to be ported anyhow. What is good about 16 bit integers? 90 % of integral numbers used in programs are small enough to fit in 16 bits. And please, do not confuse numbers with pointers. (Pure C is a 32bit compiler) 32 bit ints (let alone 64 bit) are a immense waste of space. Be aware! Not only in memory, which is cheap nowadays, but also in all the places where binaries are kept and transfered back and forth millions of times. Useless zero bits waste bandwith all over the world. -- Groeten; Regards. Henk Robbers. http://members.chello.nl/h.robbers Interactive disassembler: TT-Digger; http://digger.atari.org A Home Cooked C compiler: AHCC; http://ahcc.atari.org