On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 09:25:45AM -0800, John Reiser wrote:
Actually many of them should be using the new x86_32 software
architecture,
which is the 64-bit instruction set (thus 16 "general" registers, SSE, ...)
but with integers, longs, and pointers all 32 bits. The upper 32 bits
of any user address are 0, and not stored in RAM (except the return address
of CALL.) This gives a measurable benefit on boxes with low RAM.
Except that such a model is only barely supported in binutils, the support
for it in gcc is pre-alpha state on a branch and there is no kernel nor
glibc support.
Jakub