extreme mem usage under amd64 arch ?

[Astrodog]

On 4/8/06, Oliver Fromme <olli at lurza.secnetix.de> wrote:
> John-Mark Gurney <gurney_j at resnet.uoregon.edu> wrote:
>  > Astrodog wrote this message on Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 21:28 +0800:
>  > > and pointer, you use 4 Bytes. On a 64-bit processor, all ints, and
>  > > pointers take up 64-bits of memory. So, for every int and pointer, you
>  > > use 8 bytes. (Assuming its a 64-bit app, of course) That means
>  >
>  > Not quite...  FreeBSD/amd64 like all? the other arches are LP64...
>  > that means longs and pointers are 64bits, while ints remain at 32bits...
>
Gotcha
> I think longs are 32 bits on /i386, and 64 bits on /amd64
> (On /i386, "long longs" are 64 bits.)
>
> A programmer should not rely on specific sizes of longs,
> ints etc. anyway.  In particular, he should not assume
> that a long is larger than an int, that a pointer has
> the same size as an int or a long, and similar things.
>
Heh. Shouldn't and won't are different, sadly. Myself included.

> If a specific size is needed, then one of the standard
> types int64_t, int32_t etc. should be used which are
> defined appropriately by the OS.
>
> Or, or course, use a higher-level programming language
> where you don't have to care about integer sizes at all,
> such as Python ("print 999**999" will fill the screen
> nicely).  ;-)
>
I suspect a python kernel would be painfully slow.......

>  > This was primarily done because too many people assumed ints were
>  > 32bits for things like disk structures and network protocol layout,
>  > and to break less code, LP64 was decided upon...
>
Glad to know I'm not the only one...

> I guess this is the most important reason:  If ints were 64
> bits, there would be no easy way to handle 32 bit entities.
> Not being able to handle 32 bit objects with a native data
> type whould be a major problem, especially for an OS kernel,
> I think.
>
Can an AMD64 processor actually handle 32 bits of data natively, or
does it just knock off the last 32 bits of a 64-bit version, when its
not in long mode?

> Best regards
>    Oliver
>
> PS:  The random quote in my signature below fits pretty well.
> It really is random, I swear.  :-)
>
> --
> Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
> Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
> Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
> and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.
>
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>         -- Dennis M. Ritchie.
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