Subject: Re: Emulation
To: None <tech-kern@netbsd.org>
From: Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg@britannica.bec.de>
List: tech-kern
Date: 09/13/2007 14:49:25
On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 11:42:28AM +0100, David Brownlee wrote:
> 	If you want to make sure you code is architecture portable
> 	as well, then the best additional architecure to pick is
> 	sparc64 - compared to the 'common' x86, its 64bit vs 32bit,
> 	big endian bs little endian (while x86_64 and alpha are
> 	64bit they are also little endian like x86, allowing stupid
> 	code which treats a pointer to a 64bit value as a pointer
> 	to a 32bit value to 'accidently' get the right 32 bits.
> 	sparc64 is big endian so such code will get the wrong 32
> 	bits).

You forgot that it requires strict alignment of all multi-byte reads,
has weaker cache coherency and a number of other goodies.

Joerg