On 18 Jan 2002, Ulrich Drepper wrote: > > But what about that Alpha's special code? It could possibly be > > reused given the large Alpha's similarity to MIPS. > > No. Alpha has certain builtin code which looks similar to calls or > software interrupts but are executed in the CPU. This allows access Yep, PALcode is possibly the most significant difference. > to some memory in the CPU which is almost as fast as a normal register > access. MIPS doesn't have such hardware. If you cannot find a > register you're doomed. Hmm, why would an ABI reserve spare registers for a possible future use that might never happen? We can probably define a new ABI specifically for Linux, though, if the gain surpasses the loss. -- + Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +
