Re: Latest sources from CVS.

[Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>]

On Fri, Dec 06, 2002 at 05:45:58PM +0100, Thiemo Seufer wrote:

> > If we want to preserve the setup cleanly, we
> > probably need yet another ABI model in gcc (especially in the face of the
> > coming changes to get rid of assembly macros), with sign-extended 32-bit
> > pointers for accessing program segments and 64-bit ones for the remaining
> > addresses.
> 
> Do you think this is worth the hassle? N64 offers better flexibility in
> the large memory case at some performance cost, and it's conceptionally
> cleaner.

Absolutely:

[ralf@dea linux-sgi-2.4]$ mips64-linux-size vmlinux
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
1978296  317344  156224 2451864  256998 vmlinux
[ralf@dea linux-sgi-2.4]$ mips64-linux-size vmlinux
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
1761168  317344  156224 2234736  221970 vmlinux

The first kernel was built as 64-bit ELF using 64-bit pointer and everything
64-bit.  The second kernel was built using the -Wa,-32 trick.  That's over
12% of bloat for full 64-bitiness which brings zero gain.

  Ralf