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Re: check mips abi x linker emulation compatibility
- From: "Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro at ds2 dot pg dot gda dot pl>
- To: cgd at broadcom dot com
- Cc: Eric Christopher <echristo at redhat dot com>, Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat dot com>, Thiemo Seufer <ica2_ts at csv dot ica dot uni-stuttgart dot de>, binutils at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 13:05:05 +0200 (MET DST)
- Subject: Re: check mips abi x linker emulation compatibility
- Organization: Technical University of Gdansk
On 20 May 2003 cgd@broadcom.com wrote:
> Uh, "and mips64 means mips3 isn't confusing"? 8-)
It is, but I think that meaning (=any 64-bit MIPS CPU) predates the
MIPS64 ISA, so the ambiguity is an ISA creators' fault. ;-)
> I don't know that there's any reason to support an abi=64 default set
> of tools, since really, people shouldn't be using abi=64 except with
> certain extreme cases IMO. (more space for no gain.)
(N)64 gives you the comfort of not needing to worry a program will fail
when a 31-bit limit gets hit. This means any program that requires 64-bit
VM, such as one allocating a lot of memory (typically with anonymous
mmap()) or using mmap() on files that can exceed 2GB. For a workstation
or server type of environment the loss from a somewhat worse performance
may be negligible compared to a risk of a need to recompile software at
the time it fails, which is usually the worst possible moment.
You can also use (n)64 as a debugging tool to find and fix unportable
code, such as one assuming sizeof(int) == sizeof(void). That's a
secondary use, of course, but still nice.
--
+ Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+ e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +