Re: [9fans] speaking of kenc

[lucio@proxima.alt.za]

>   I partially agree with you, but anything in hardware that isn't
> directly represented by C semantics is a fair game for using 
> __asm's. In fact, it is the only way to make your software look
> good on a particular platform. I don't know how to fix that with
> C and it seems that the rest of the posters on this thread don't
> really know either. But this is a problem.

Well, of course it's a contradiction (dilemma, I suppose), so, no, you
can't fix it.

But one could define a machine-independent mechanism to implement
machine-dependent extensions to the C language and to a large degree
that is what inline assembly as well as .s files are all about.  I
imagine that brucee and forsyth, with their intimate knowledge of the
Plan 9 C development system could easily provide such tools as inlining.

My limited understanding suggests that the optimisations you refer to:

>   The problem is not register allocation per se, but how it ties into
> instructions scheduling, piplining and all that jazz. And no, you can't
> beat a smart compiler on architectures as complex as AMD64 and EM64T.

are best done by 8l or equivalent, specially when it comes to inlining
functions in a previously separate source file.  But I'm no expert, I
imagine that the compiler might need to supply a little more detail to
assist.

I would like to see such issues addressed, however, as the Plan 9
development environment seems more robust in this area than the
unmanageable monstrosity that is GCC.  It's really a pity that on this
list the only people with the spare cycles to deal with this issues
are those who feel a need to prove that Plan 9 can be as good as, say,
Linux, to the competing camp instead of concentrating on evolving Plan
9's own strengths.

The comparison with dinosaurs and small, furry mammals keeps coming to
mind: little did the furry ones know that conditions would eventually
change to favour their fur against the dinosaur's scales, but they
didn't evolve towards scales and size just because it was the fashion
of the day.

++L