Re: how to tell if a process is 64-bit

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> That's why I asked "what does 'is 64-bit' mean".  Your previous reference to$

Any particular reason for the paragraph-length line?

Manually repairing it (and trimming to the part I'm replying to),

> [...] the question "does this program use 64 bit addresses".  There
> are at least two other possible questions: (a) does this program have
> access to 64 bit registers, and (b) can this program do operations
> such as arithmetic on 64 bit integers.

You would be hard-pressed to find a platform on which (b) is false (and
I'm not restricting that to NetBSD-supporting platforms, though I think
I would have to restrict it to devices that were designed to be
general-purpose computers).  Even things like the tiny little
MC68HC908QY4 8-bit microcontrollers in 16-pin DIP packages I've
currently lost my tube of can do 64-bit arithmetic.

Not fast (they don't do _anything_ fast), and not in single
instructions, but so what?  Even a sparc64 machine can't do a
general-purpose 64-bit add in a single instruction unless both inputs
are already in registers and leaving the output in a register is
acceptable.

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