RFC: A new MIPS64 ABI

[Paul Koning]

On Feb 14, 2011, at 9:14 PM, Joe Buck wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 05:57:13PM -0800, Paul Koning wrote:
>> It seems that this proposal would benefit programs that need more than 2 GB but less than 4 GB, and for some reason really don't want 64 bit pointers.
>> 
>> This seems like a microscopically small market segment.  I can't see any sense in such an effort.
> 
> I remember the RHEL hugemem patch being a big deal for lots of their
> customers, so a process could address the full 4GB instead of only 3GB
> on a 32-bit machine.  If I recall correctly, upstream didn't want it
> (get a 64-bit machine!) but lots of paying customers clamored for it.

Fair enough, but that's a very different case.  As Matt points out, the proposal here requires a 64 bit machine; the only difference is in the user process space limit when that process is running in 32 bit mode.

	paul