[gambit-list] Tweak possible to "emulate" 64bit features on a 32bit architecture?

Adam adam.mlmb at gmail.com
Sun Aug 7 09:04:56 EDT 2016


2016-08-07 20:34 GMT+08:00 Marc Feeley <feeley at iro.umontreal.ca>:

> Forcing 64 bit “words” on a 32 bit machine should be relatively
> straightforward to implement, but I question the utility of this (factor of
> 2 space usage).  Better would be to change the object representation so
> that the header of objects would be always 64 bits (or better, split into a
> 32 bit length and 32 bit type and GC flags).  The implementation complexity
> of both is about the same (roughly 2 days of work).


Ah, I think you corrected a limited understanding on my behalf - actually
it's the object header that would need to be tweaked, rather than the
object representation, as the object header contains string and u8vector
lengths.


> However, too much work for me right now given the low need for this
> feature.
>

Great - right - this was only a question.


> Aren’t 32 bit architectures pretty much a thing of the past?  These days,
> even embedded systems are 64 bit architectures.
>

I would have hoped they were!


Tell me a single commodity ARM board on the market with a 64bit chip. I'm
not aware of a single one.

On the X86 embedded side, there are some Intel Atom processors that do
64bit.

The world abounds of 32-bit boards however and they start from like 10 USD.


Thanks for answering that it indeed is possible
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