On 02/14/2011 06:34 PM, Matt Thomas wrote:
On Feb 14, 2011, at 6:26 PM, David Daney wrote:
On 02/14/2011 06:14 PM, Joe Buck wrote:
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 05:57:13PM -0800, Paul Koning wrote:
It seems that this proposal would benefit programs that need more than 2 GB but
less than 4 GB, and for some reason really don't want 64 bit pointers.
This seems like a microscopically small market segment. I can't see any sense
in such an effort.
I remember the RHEL hugemem patch being a big deal for lots of their
customers, so a process could address the full 4GB instead of only 3GB
on a 32-bit machine. If I recall correctly, upstream didn't want it
(get a 64-bit machine!) but lots of paying customers clamored for it.
(I personally don't have an opinion on whether it's worth bothering with).
Also look at the new x86_64 ABI (See all those X32 psABI messages) that the
Intel folks are actively working on. This proposal is very similar to what
they are doing.
untrue. N32 is closer to the X32 ABI since it is limited to 2GB.
It would only be 'untrue' if I had said it was *exactly like* the X32 thing.
Really n32 is, as you note, already quite similar to what X32 is trying
to do. My proposal is really for a small improvement to n32 to allow
doubling the size of the virtual address space to 4GB.
David Daney
