64 bit ints

David Callahan david at june.cs.washington.edu
Sat Oct 29 00:31:57 AEST 1988


Suppose I am designing a C compiler for a machine with 64bit
words. "Char" should be 8bits of course and "long int" 64 since
pointers will be.

How long should an "int" be (32 or 64)? 
How about a "short int" (16/32)?
How is this decision altered if partial word accesses 
are more expensive than full word accesses?

What have other 64bit vendors done (assuming I'd like to
be compatible with someone)?

David Callahan
Tera Computer Co.
Seattle Washington



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