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Article #10993

Re: branch-and-link

#10993
From: Dan Swartzendruber
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 04:49
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On a related note (vis-a-vis debugging ease) to the branch-and-link issue, another peeve
I've always had is that no commercially available processors (that I know of) make NULL
pointer detection easy withou serious run-time overhead.  Various OS's try by unmapping
the first N pages of memory, which works fine until you run into a chip like the 68030,
which supports huge displacements.  Not to mention if the index register pushes the
effective address out of your protected window, you're hosed.  If you have a standard
base_reg+index_reg+disp format, it would seem to me that having the processor check the
base register for NULL and faulting if it is wouldn't be that hard (or inefficient).
Especially if NULL happens to be zero on that machine.

-- 

#include <std_disclaimer.h>

Dan S.
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From: dswartz@sw.stratus.com (Dan Swartzendruber)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: branch-and-link
Date: 28 Dec 1992 04:49:40 GMT
Organization: Stratus Computer, Inc.
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