On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:48:03 +0200, Leopold Toetsch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > John Siracusa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:46:53 -0400, Dan Sugalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> The big question is whether being clever and producing the tightest > >> type is worth the time to figure out what that type is, as well as > >> the potentially uncertain output type. > > > Tangentially related: will promotion be suitably delayed on systems with > > support for 64-bit ints? More generally, what is the state-of/plan-for > > "64-bit support" (whatever that may mean) in Parrot? > > I thought about that during BigInt hacking. It could be a nice > optimization if we go: > > Int -> Int64 -> BigInt > > on 32-bit systems that have 64-bit integer support. OTOH it makes type > promotion a bit more complicated and dependent on configuration > settings.
Why make a stop in 32-bit land at all in that case? If the system supports 64-bit ints, why not use them for everything right up until you promote to BigNum? Is it a memory bandwidth issue or something? Either way, it'll definitely be a boon to fast integer math if 64-bit ints are used to stave off promotion to BigNum when possible. This may be especially true for languages like Perl 6 which (AFAIK) doesn't have an "int64" native type specifier. So either Perl 6's "int" type is 64-bit where possible, or is a 32-to-64-auto-promoting type. -John
