*BSD News Article 84073


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From: casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.internals,comp.unix.osf.osf1
Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6
Supersedes: <cancel.casper.32a2d2b9@mail.fwi.uva.nl>
Date: 2 Dec 1996 13:59:37 +0100
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Netherlands
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borchert@turing.mathematik.uni-ulm.de (Andreas Borchert) writes:

>On 1 Dec 1996 18:07:28 GMT, Peter da Silva <peter@nmti.com> wrote:
>> DEC has already taken the hit for this. Anything that has been ported to
>> the Alpha has already adjusted to 64 bit longs.

>Well, this comparison does not count. DEC started the Alpha immediately
>with 64 bits (years later after the SPARC architecture), starting with
>no software base.


It's not like they wrote it all from scratch.  DEC did take a hit for this,
I'm sure; X11 had to be ported and all 3rd part stuff, available
for 32 bit only, had to be ported.  There was a price to pay
for going 64 bit, even if binary compatibility is not a concern.

But that work is done now, and any many 64 bit porting issues have been
dealt with on a per product/program basis, including PD software.

(On 64 bit SPARC/Solaris, we'll probably be troubled more by #ifdef sun than
anything else, though Solaris probably stamped out a good bit of that
already)

Casper
-- 
Casper Dik - Sun Microsystems - via my guest account at the University
of Amsterdam.  My work e-mail address is: Casper.Dik@Holland.Sun.COM
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.