segments and Unix

[Mike Wexler]

Reply-To: mike at peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler)
Organization: Peregrine Systems, Inc., Irvine, CA

In article <260 at mipos3.UUCP> kds at mipos3.UUCP (Ken Shoemaker ~) writes:
->I'm sorry, but I have to take exception to some of the points raised here:
->In article <9400 at sun.uucp> david at sun.uUCp (David DiGiacomo) writes:
->>No, for four reasons:
->> - It is very expensive to expand pointers to hold a reasonably large 
->>   (16 bit?) segment number field.
->very expensive?  They are already at least 32-bits wide!  Besides, I
->thought that the whole idea of the 32-bit processors was that you got
->to talk to lots of memory...
The point is to handle segments you would want to have 48 bit points:
a 16 bit segment number and a 32 bit offset within the segment.  Otherwise,
you would be limiting how big individual objects could be.  The other problem
is you might want to have >65536 objects.
-- 
Mike Wexler
(trwrb|scgvaxd)!felix!peregrine!mike
(714)855-3923