Re: [9fans] 64-Bit programming model.

["Devon H. O'Dell" <devon.odell@gmail.com>]

2005/9/30, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov>:
> Jim McKie wrote:
>
> > >    ... are best served if there is a single choice widespread in the
> > >    emerging 64-bit systems. This removes a source of subtle errors in
> > >    porting to a 64-bit environment, and encourages more rapid
> > >    exploitation of the technology options.
> >
> > I think that's backwards, you get sloppy in a monoculture.
>
> yeah, good point. We kept our alphas alive here for a long time for one
> reason: to make sure they kept us honest. For one thing, they would
> really complain about bad alighment. Pentiums are way too kind when you
> do something stupid like misalign a long or vlong.
>
> I was sad when it came time to turn them off.
>
> It's too easy to be stupid with just one architecture.
>
> ron

I just ran into an alignment bug yesterday doing credential passing
over Unix Domain Sockets on amd64. Admittedly, I should have read the
RFC (and more of the sunrpc code, which is where I stole mine from),
but it is really easy to run into alignment issues when you're only
using one architecture.

Though I don't necessarily agree with Jim if I understand him
correctly. I don't think that providing interfaces to make code
compilation on systems of different bit sizes promotes `a sloppy
monoculture.'

--Devon