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- Newsgroups: comp.arch
- Path: sparky!uunet!kithrup!sef
- From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
- Subject: Re: What's in a name?
- Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
- Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 21:40:15 GMT
- Message-ID: <1992Jul27.214015.4138@kithrup.COM>
- References: <1992Jul25.075130.7192@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <1992Jul27.165807.29014@adobe.com>
- Lines: 18
-
- In article <1992Jul27.165807.29014@adobe.com> zstern@adobe.com (Zalman Stern) writes:
- >1) The 486 still supports an incredibly baroque segmentation scheme that no
- >interesting piece of 32 bit software uses. (I.e. Segmentation should have
- >been left out of the 32 bit architecture and the gates and other resources
- >used to do something productive.)
-
- The segmentation scheme is crucial to the chip; you can, for example, have a
- task with 16-bit and 32-bit segments. I.e., there isn't a "32-bit mode,"
- instead, there are 32-bit *segments*.
-
- The chip would have been far worse had they come up with two seperate modes
- for the '386.
-
- --
- Sean Eric Fagan | "My psychiatrist says I have a messiah
- sef@kithrup.COM | complex. But I forgive him."
- -----------------+ -- Jim Carrey
- Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.
-