Re: [OFF-TOPIC] Cobalt 64-bit, what for? (was: 64-bit fix)

[Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 11:20:54AM +0200, Dominique Quatravaux wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, is there any practical interest in going 64bit on 
> Cobalt besides the fun of it?

Second hand Cobalt MIPS hardware is available fairly cheaply so it's being
used by various Linux developers for doing development work, including
64-bit work.

> One cannot possibly squeeze more than 4 Gb of RAM into a Cobalt box right?

No, the limit is significantly less.  64-bit kernels are advantagous if

 - running N32 or N64 software is desired
 - anything that takes advantage of 64-bit registers or the 32/32 fpr model
 - software is using large amounts of virtual address space.  Process size
   is limited to 2GB which is tight for some of todays codes which do their
   I/O by memory mapping files.
 - and of the course there is the "more inches" factor ;-)

> And doesn't 64 bit mode have costs of its own (doubled i-fetch bandwidth
> for starters)?

Fortunately not double and caches will further blurr the picture - but on
a system with a 32-bit processor and memory bus there will be very
noticable impact.  We're using a bunch of tricks to keep the overhead under
control.

  Ralf