*BSD News Article 92287


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From: dillon@flea.best.net (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community"
Date: 28 Mar 1997 11:15:08 -0800
Organization: BEST Internet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <5hh5bs$9jp@flea.best.net>
References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <5h92no$gua@innocence.interface-business.de> <5h9sdu$3ag@flea.best.net> <5hed6k$bv0@troma.rv.tis.com>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.sco.misc:37621 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38022 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6499 comp.sys.sgi.misc:29513

:In article <5hed6k$bv0@troma.rv.tis.com>,
:Mark Sienkiewicz <mark@troma.rv.tis.com> wrote:
:>In article <5h9sdu$3ag@flea.best.net>,
:>Matt Dillon <dillon@flea.best.net> wrote:
:>>    Mmm.. respectfully, I would disagree.  This might be true for very large
:>>    binaries, but for most programs the DATA+RSS+ALLOCATION will completely
:>>    override the size of the TEXT area (portion of the binary that holds
:>>    the instructions).  The only time I see big differences in a ps is with
:>>    shared libraries, which vary greatly across architectures, but being
:>>    shared they do not have much impact on the true memory use.
:>
:>That's interesting.  Do you have any idea why this is the case?  I
:>would expect that a program using 64 bit numbers would take up more 
:>memory than one using 32 bit numbers.  
:>
:>Maybe a lot more programs manipulate characters (i.e. bytes) than 
:>integers?

    Absolutely not.  The instructions are generally the same size.  Take,
    for example, the motorola instruction set.  You can do this:

    move.b	4(A0),D0		copy byte from memory to D0
    move.w	4(A0),D0		copy word from memory to D0
    move.l	4(A0),D0		copy long from memory to D0

    The instructions are the same size.  If you look at, say, the R4400
    instruction set with it in 64 bit mode, the instructions are the 
    same size as if it were in 32 bit mode.

    The *data storage* might not necessarily be the same size, but I
    do not think that has anything to do with shared libraries either.
    It's just that different vendors organize their shared libraries in
    different ways.  some have optimized them, some have not.  Some have
    included many additional functions or functionality, some have not.
    There a billion differences. 

						-Matt