chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (07/16/87)
In article <6706@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) writes: >[ I thought you mentioned that the 32 bit size was hardware supported. >On many machines the short math is faster than long (ie. vax, 68000). ] On the Vax, the short math is exactly as fast (or as slow) as the long, at least in register-to-register operations, according to an ancient set of 780 `timings' that once appeared on the net. The 4BSD compilers will not put `short' or `char' variables in registers, and memory references are slower than register references; hence 32 bit arithmetic is often faster than 16 or 8 bit arithmetic on a Vax. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7690) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: seismo!mimsy!chris