Maciej W. Rozycki wrote: > On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Thiemo Seufer wrote: > > > Maybe I wasn't clear about it, I meant kernels with 32 bit address > > space but 64 bit register width, allowing for userland N32 ABI. > > > > E.g. the old DECstations with R4k CPU and limited memory would fit > > in this scheme. :-) > > I'm only going to support n64 on the DECstation. You are welcomed to do > n32 stuff yourself if you want to. What does N64 on the DECstation better than N32 could do? N32 has more compact code, better cache usage and less memory consumption. > > > Remember we are writing of the kernel -- we don't know what userland is > > > going to bring us > > > > I don't understand this. The kernel _defines_ what the userland is allowed > > to do. > > I haven't considered you may mean crippling the available user address > space. IIRC is the maximum of RAM 448 MB on some machines. Actually utilizing an user address space larger than 2 GB would mean a RAM/Swap ratio of about 1:4, IOW, it likely gets unusable slow. Is there any point besides of hack value to use N64 on these machines? Thiemo
