henry (12/10/82)
The Three Rivers Computer Corporation "Perq" has 32-bit pointers and 16-bit integers. No, it is not reasonable to try to make int 32 bits; the machine just doesn't cooperate very well. This leads to interesting fun trying to get a C compiler up on it; my MSc thesis started out to be the implementation of such a compiler and wound up being a study of the problems involved. While C does not have any deep assumptions about ints and pointers being the same size, the PCC compiler does... among its other machine-dependencies. [Would-be PCC hackers are cautioned that I no longer remember all the gory details, and don't particularly want to refresh my memory.] The Perq also has other enjoyable features, such as having no such thing as pointer-to-character. The machine is word-addressed. Nor can you pull the standard word-addressed-machine trick of using spare bits in the pointer to hold a byte number: there are no spare bits. This one is not unsolvable, but it's hard, and the results are spectacularly inefficient unless you add microcode to help. Altogether not a very well-thought-out machine. Although it sure does do RasterOp quickly...