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From: "Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." <bss03@volumehost.net>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Semi OT: 64 bit processors, the Linux Kernel, and x86 Gentoo.
Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 06:08:02 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <200705250608.07606.bss03@volumehost.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <AA0639A1EB70AE409130258CE7BDC31806646B18@messenger.cv63.navy.mil>

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On Friday 25 May 2007 04:53:26 burlingk@cv63.navy.mil wrote:
> What makes the difference between a 64 bit kernel, and a 32 bit kernel?

Use of 64-bit machine code [*], particularly instructions that make use of 
64-bit native[**] registers[***].

* Defining this is more difficult, since that does not mean instruction 
requiring 64-bits to represent as many architectures have variable length 
instructions.

** Native is a difficult term to define, but I'm explicitly excluding the 
floating-point registers that have been 64-bit or 80-bit from my vague notion 
of native

*** I guess this makes the Cell processor 128-bit?  BTW, if the 
term "register" doesn't mean anything to you it's the fastest memory in your 
computer, closer to the ALU (etc.) than L1 cache, very small and expensive 
that are addressed differently than all other memory.

-- 
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.                     ,= ,-_-. =. 
bss03@volumehost.net                      ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy           `-'(. .)`-' 
http://iguanasuicide.org/                      \_/     

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  reply	other threads:[~2007-05-25 11:13 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2007-05-25  9:53 [gentoo-user] Semi OT: 64 bit processors, the Linux Kernel, and x86 Gentoo burlingk
2007-05-25 11:08 ` Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. [this message]
2007-05-25 12:31   ` Denis
2007-05-25 13:06     ` Florian Philipp
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2007-05-25 14:12 burlingk
2007-05-25 19:54 ` Peter Alfredsen
2007-05-25 12:44 burlingk
2007-05-25 13:54 ` Peter Alfredsen
2007-05-25  9:09 burlingk
2007-05-25  9:28 ` Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
2007-05-25  7:12 burlingk
2007-05-25  8:07 ` Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.

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