On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Kevin D. Kissell wrote: > n32 has the same data types as o32, an "ILP32" C integer > model. n64 is a pretty normal "LP64" C integer model. > > What do you consider to be broken, and how would you > have preferred it to have been done? For n32 it would be natural to have: - sizeof(int) = 32 - sizeof(long) = 64 - sizeof(void *) = 32 as the underlying hardware directly supports 64-bit operations (n32 requires at least MIPS III). Thus there is no penalty for 64-bit arithmetics and if one uses longs one normally wants the largest native integer type -- using long long typically (i.e. on most platforms) implies double-precision arithmetics with all the drawbacks, especially for the division and multiplication operations. With 32-bit long on 64-bit hardware software has no easy way to figure using 64-bit operations is still optimal performance-wise. I can't see any technical benefit from such a setup -- is there any? I doubt it. -- + Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +
