alt Hacker NewsIn what architecture are those types different? Is there a good reason for it there architecturally, or is it just a toolchain idiosyncrasy in terms of how it's exposed (like LP64 vs. LLP64 etc.)?
In what architecture are those types different? Is there a good reason for it there architecturally, or is it just a toolchain idiosyncrasy in terms of how it's exposed (like LP64 vs. LLP64 etc.)?
CHERI has 64-bit object size but 128-bit pointers (because the pointer values also carry pointer provenance metadata in addition to an address). I know some of the pointer types on GPUs (e.g., texture pointers) also have wildly different sizes for the address size versus the pointer size. Far pointers on segmented i386 would be 16-bit object and index size but 32-bit address and pointer size.
There was one accelerator architecture we were working that discussed making the entire datapath be 32-bit (taking less space) and having a 32-bit index type with a 64-bit pointer size, but this was eventually rejected as too hard to get working.