At 12:24 PM 9/24/2001 +0200, Bart Lateur wrote:
>On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 16:42:21 -0400, Dan Sugalski wrote:
>
> >Nope. At the very least, a bytecode file needs to start with:
> >
> >8-byte word: endianness (magic value 0x123456789abcdef0)
> >byte: word size
> >byte[7]: empty
> >word: major version
> >word: minor version
> >
> >Where all word values are as big as the word size says they are.
>
>I'm just wondering... Since we need a conversion tool for reading
>non-native bytecode formats anyway, and since all bytecodes will be
>limited to 32 bit... could it not be that on current day processors,
>reading and converting of 32 bit bytecodes to 64 bit, if that is the
>native format, could actually be faster than reading in 64 bit bytecodes
>with no conversion? I would think that CPU cycles are cheap when
>compared to disk I/O.
Sure, but don't forget that if we're mmapping in we may well never map in
good chunks of the stuff on disk. Also the mapping can be done
asynchronously, with the system faulting in several pages simultaneously
and letting us go when the first page is in.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
