On Apr 8, 2012 6:24 PM, "Tove" <t...@fransson.se> wrote: > > I just stumbled upon this: > https://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/home > > /rant > > I remember back in the glorious MC68000 days(24bit addressing)... leaving 8bits for creative optimizations... until 68020 took away all the fun that is. > > So... I was kinda upset that x86-64 was explicitly designed not to permit such tricks despite having a 48bit addressing mode... hmpf shooting oneself in the foot is the fun part of programming. > > /end rant > > Anyway... x32-abi to the rescue, access to 64bit registers just as normal... but using efficient 32bit pointers, suddenly there are 32 bits free to play with, D-slices passed around in a single normal 64bit register anyone? actually 32bits is a lot... one could also possibly imagine creative flags for the GC. >
There could also be a mode where if you need more than 32bits you could use slow odd-sized pointers.