Re: tagged/untagged data in lisp system programming

Pierre THIERRY wrote:
Le Sat, 16 Dec 2006 02:05:37 +0000, Wade Humeniuk a écrit:
Take the easy road. No 32-bit cells, only 64-bit cells. 32-bits as
value, 32-bits as tag. As it has been pointed out it would be great
to have a 36-bit, 40-bit or 72-bit processor.

Is it so important to have 32-bits values? Why not use a fraction of the
32-bits word in a 32-bits architecture, in the same way than 36, 40, 44
or 72-bits architectures did? Is the fact that the size of the value has
to be a power of 2 the problem?


Well....

Many data types are expressed in powers of 2.

32-bit Red-Green-Blue-Alpha Colour. Think OpenGL vectors.
32-bit Machine Addresses
32-bit CRCs
8-bit ASCII
16-bit Unicode


To interact with computer hardware, its best to use its
natural bit sizing. Since very few machines are designed
to handle adding 23-bit integers, it becomes a problem to
pick something unnaturally sized.

Why worry about wasting space? Spread out, enjoy the luxury
of massive amounts of bit storage. Why is it necessary to
fight and make one's life difficult?

Wade
.

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