x86_64 updates

[Gene C.]

On Tuesday 27 January 2004 11:33, Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> For some of us who were using Alpha and other 64-bit processors
> this experience is some decade long or something like that.  This
> detail that Red Hat had Alpha and SPARC distribution for quite a
> while is not without a significance in that that 64-bit user space
> on x86_64 basically "just works".  Personally I run into the issue
> even earlier.  "Natural" sizes on Atari ST with MC68000 were 2
> for sizeof(int) and 4 for longs and pointers.

It is not the packages that are maintained/QA'ed by companies/organizations 
such as Red Hat, SUSE, Mandrake, Debian, *BSD, etc. but the 3rd party 
packages who only worry about the 32 bit world ... and Microsoft's choice of 
4 byte "long" but 8 byte pointers in their 64 bit Windows does not make 
things easier either.

This http://www.opengroup.org/public/tech/aspen/lp64_wp.htm is a nice writeup 
on the 64 bit programming models.
-- 
Gene