On Friday 01 March 2002 8:39 am, William Lee Irwin III wrote: > On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 10:07:31AM +0200, Zwane Mwaikambo wrote: > > Yep, i wonder if you could call SMM (System Management Mode) #4 then, but > > thats another weird one. I think there should be a SPM (Sane Processor > > Mode) where all the x86 brain damages all disappear and we can just get > > on with our coding ;) > > Ah, but that would require emulation of SPARC, MIPS, PPC, or Alpha, > which neither Intel nor AMD is likely to include in their next CPU. x86-64 takes a few steps in that direction with Long mode, though... (No segmentation crap, nice big set of orthogonal registers, etc) with just enough baggage to make the transition from x86 bearable. A much better approach than Itanic, IMHO... James. Who really isn't a big fan of the register windows in SPARC - but at least THEY didn't include a big chunk of HARDWARE to spill registers to memory as needed... *ewww*! :) -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ IRC Channel: irc.openprojects.net / #kernelnewbies Web Page: http://www.kernelnewbies.org/
