[nylug-talk] LOWMEM vs. HIGHMEM performance advantage?

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

From: Yusuke Shinyama <yusuke at cs.nyu.edu>
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:02:08 -0400 (EDT), Alex Pilosov <alex at pilosoft.com> 
> wrote:
> > 
> > x86-64 (i will call it x64 and spare me) - is *bad* idea *unless* you
> > *have* to. because pointers are 64-bit, lots of structures are much larger
> > in size, so your binaries and data are much larger in size, so you blow
> > l2/l3 cache much faster, and use up more memory for same work.
> 
> Wasn't there a similar kind of argument in the 16->32bit transition era?
> 
> I'm wondering if we will ever overcome this in some near future, 
> or we're going to stick with the same 32bit architecture for another
> couple of decades (which is okay for me though.)

Hard to say.  Half or more of the problems with the current 32 and 64 bit Intel-oid CPUs is legacy from the 8/16 bit roots they came from.  (And yes, there are also remnants of the 8080 and even the 4004 in the spiffy new things -- read the assembly language instruction set manuals).  Damn, but I wish Motorola had continued the 68k line instead of going (and eventually failing) the RISC route -- much better CPUs IMAO.  Definitely better for *ix than the crud that is presently hogging the market.  But I may be prejudiced, I started with Xenix on the 68000, on a little machine known as the TRS-80 Model 16.  (An officially licensed port of Unix by Microsoft from AT&T, Microsoft wasn't competent to make it an end-user product so they sublet it to Altos, IBM, (the original) SCO and Tandy (back in the days when I was doing training and tech support at various Radio Shack Computer Centers in the far southwest).
--
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

These histrionics were probably unnecessary, since there was no reason to think anybody would be watching us with more than casual interest until I made my first move to follow Buchanon's trail, in London.  Still, somebody might check back this far later, and I always feel that if you're going to play a part, you might as well play it all the way, at least in public -- and it's hard to tell what's public and what isn't, these electronic days.
Donald Hamilton, _The Devastators_, 1965