Article View: comp.arch
Article #22058Re: Integer Multiply/Divide on Sparc
From: Andrew Klossner
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1990 20:19
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1990 20:19
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1442 bytes
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"What about the ABI (application binary interface) standard you
guys are pushing ... Even if it is not a new instruction but an
integer co-processor, it still needs to be included in the
ABI."
This is backward. There is no need to include a new, commonly
implemented instruction in the ABI, and there are good reasons not to
do it. The ABI details a common subset, the intersection of conformant
systems, not the union.
The SPARC ABI describes the virtual machine which is (will be?)
implemented on all SPARC systems. It gives the interface which an
ABI-conformant application can depend on. If a machine implements both
the ABI and the new multiply instruction, programs which conform to the
ABI (and therefore do not use multiply) will still execute correctly.
This is all that matters.
-=- Andrew Klossner (uunet!tektronix!frip.WV.TEK!andrew) [UUCP]
(andrew%frip.wv.tek.com@relay.cs.net) [ARPA]
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!orca.wv.tek.com!frip!andrew From: andrew@frip.WV.TEK.COM (Andrew Klossner) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Integer Multiply/Divide on Sparc Message-ID: <5837@orca.wv.tek.com> Date: 11 Jan 90 20:19:20 GMT References: <8840005@hpfcso.HP.COM> <1249@otc.otca.oz> Sender: andrew@orca.wv.tek.com Reply-To: andrew@frip.wv.tek.com Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville, Oregon Lines: 21