PowerMops plans

[Mike Hore]

Hi all,

I'm now the proud posessor of a G5 iMac -- so this will give
me a chance to produce a version of PowerMops supporting
64-bit operations. The first step will probably be to widen
the data stack to 64-bit cells. Hopefully this can be done
without breaking existing applications since the "extra"
32 bits of each cell will just be unused on 32-bit machines.
(They of course won't exist in registers, but will be there
in the memory part of the stack, and just be zero and
unused. The return stack is already like this, since we
needed 64-bit alignment for FP values being saved and restored.)

Then after that I can add true 64-bit words, which of course
will only be valid on 64-bit machines. I'll post a progress
note here from time to time.

Cheers, Mike.

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Mike Hore ***@OVE.invalid.icasolution.com.au
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[Erik]

Would this be a library that can be called upon to perform 64-bit
operations, or would it be some kind of restructuring of Mops itself?

Erik

[Charlie Springer]

G5 Mops? Egggsellent! (Fingers tented ala Mr. Burns)

-- Charlie Springer

[Mike Hore]

Post by Erik
Would this be a library that can be called upon to perform 64-bit
operations, or would it be some kind of restructuring of Mops itself?

Hi Erik, it would be a restructuring of Mops itself. Data
stack cells would become 64 bits wide.

What I'd prefer would be not to break old code if it doesn't do
too many "clever" things, but we'll see how we go once we get
into it.

Cheers, Mike.


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Mike Hore ***@OVE.invalid.icasolution.com.au
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[Erik]

Just out of curiousity, now that the WWDC keynote is over and we know
that there will be a transition to Intel processors, how will the
roadmap of Mops be affected?

Erik

[Mike Hore]

Post by Erik
Just out of curiousity, now that the WWDC keynote is over and we know
that there will be a transition to Intel processors, how will the
roadmap of Mops be affected?

Hi Erik,

I'm not sure yet -- except that I'm no great Intel fan, so I'll
be very interested to see what the future PowerPC plans will
be. Targetting a different processor is a big job, and what
with other things on my plate, I don't know whether I'll
be able to get up enough enthusiasm to do it -- especially
if the actual chip is x86. Then I'd need access to a machine
to test on, and I'm likely to be spending most time in the
next few years out in a remote location. So overall I'd
probably prefer to pass the ball to someone else.

Cheers, Mike.


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Mike Hore ***@OVE.invalid.icasolution.com.au
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