[csw-maintainers] 32bit vs 64bit

[Joerg Schilling]

Ben Walton <bwalton at opencsw.org> wrote:

> Is it time to flip this default to on?  Some apps would benefit, as
> you noted.  Others wouldn't, but if those don't use isaexec, the
> 32-bit would still be the default.

Most applications on sparc do not get a benefit from 64 bit as sparc is an 
orthogonal CPU and you have to pay for 64 bit with bigger code.

Many applications in x86 benefit from 64 bit as they get twice as many 
registers with 64 bits and as missing registers is one of the major design 
faults from Intel.

There is another more interesting thing to discuss. The large file summit in 
1995 did bring us 32 bit support for files > 2147483646 bytes but the standard 
commitee did forget about adding support for the time past 2038 Jan 19 03:14:07.

Sooner or later all applications that have to deal with times will have to be 
converted to 64 bit only and many of them are still not well written for the 
future.

I had to work a lot on e.g. SCCS in order to remove any time related 
limitations. In order to support the time range for SCCS mentioned in POSIX 
with a 32 bit application, I added code that folds the time between 
2038 Jan 19 03:14:08 GMT and Y2068 to times between 1902 and 1932.


Jörg

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