Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: architectural goals, Byte Addressability And Beyond
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2024 10:32:25 GMT
Organization: Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <2024Jun5.123225@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>
References: <20240603130821.000076b3@yahoo.com> <memo.20240605094016.3656K@jgd.cix.co.uk>
Injection-Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2024 12:54:45 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="82def94986e1cd5344673139d3d2c8ca";
	logging-data="985558"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18KJDiKkr2DTxcI4ztLiFUP"
Cancel-Lock: sha1:PABRyK9kBploU37oOFYo8d3QuvA=
X-newsreader: xrn 10.11
Bytes: 1976

jgd@cix.co.uk (John Dallman) writes:
>I would like to keep testing the commercial product I work on in a
>big-endian, alignment-trapping environment.

Computer architecture exhibits convergence.  Starting in the 1960s it
converged on byte addressing with 8-bit bytes and on 2s-complement,
starting in the 1980s it converged on IEEE FP, and ending in the 2010s
it converged on supporting unaligned accesses and on little-endian
byte order.  Your difficulties in getting hardware for testing whether
software can work with alignment restrictions and with big-endian byte
order is a result of that convergence.  Maybe your desire to keep your
software ready for big-endian hardware and hardware with alignment
restrictions is misguided.

>New SPARC boxes are expensive, dealing with Oracle is hard work, and the
>architecture has no future. 

Ebay?

- anton
-- 
'Anyone trying for "industrial quality" ISA should avoid undefined behavior.'
  Mitch Alsup, <c17fcd89-f024-40e7-a594-88a85ac10d20o@googlegroups.com>