From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <9ab217670509302019h139a3d72j@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 20:19:18 -0700 From: "Devon H. O'Dell" To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] 64-Bit programming model. In-Reply-To: <433DFDEC.9040301@lanl.gov> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline References: <32a656c20509300431j6ab02b7cm7512019149d45a59@mail.gmail.com> <32a656c20509301427v79705106ta3c169660f5d59b6@mail.gmail.com> <433DFDEC.9040301@lanl.gov> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 92cd7498-ead0-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 2005/9/30, Ronald G Minnich : > 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