Opinion Required for AMD 64 Port

[Sanky]

Hi there,
I would like to know what do you guys (Andy, in particular) feel about
data types and sizes in 64 bit port.
Should long be upgraded to 128 bits and pointers to 64 bits or for the
sake of compatibility and ports, should long remain 64 bits and only
pointers be upgraded to 64 bits of storage?

Further, do you recommend any changes to the file system and binary
format as well to accomodate these new types and registers?
Although I'm not sure, as I've not researched binary formats and file
system yet, I think a little change is inevitible? What does the
community feel? Can we standardize upon the format as well?

I dont know if Minix is a community driven phenomenon yet, but I feel
these decisions are best left to the community.

Awaiting suggestions.

Sanket

[lpal...@gmail.com]

Sanky wrote:
> Hi there,
> I would like to know what do you guys (Andy, in particular) feel about
> data types and sizes in 64 bit port.
> Should long be upgraded to 128 bits and pointers to 64 bits or for the
> sake of compatibility and ports, should long remain 64 bits and only
> pointers be upgraded to 64 bits of storage?

I think you'd want to stick to the LP64 model.

http://www.unix.org/version2/whatsnew/login_64bit.html
http://www.unix.org/version2/whatsnew/lp64_wp.html

[ast]

In all fairness, I have not thought much about 64 bitters. Just from
what I know about the code, I think having int, char *, and long all be
64 bits will be easier than having different sizes.

I am inclined to change as little as possible initially when going to
64 bits. If the file formats etc can be kept the same (except for the
use of 64-bit ints), it should make the porting easier than changing a
dozen different things at once.

Andy Tanenbaum

[Segin]

A.out format doesn't allow muchin the room of 64-bit IIRC... Or does it
already do 64-bit (discarding the first 32-bits after endianess
conversions)?

We can always try using ELF64 as a last resort.