Re: GCC 4.1 now the default GCC version for etch
On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 01:51:46AM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> The lack of x87 wouldn't be a problem. At least, i386 still has the
> code left from the old days and will emulate it transparently; when
> such an amd64 CPU pops out the x87 emulation can be ported.
>
> In fact, it has a separate hardware path from all other types of
> unknown opcodes (INT7 instead of INT6); x87 was _designed_ to be
> emulated if not present from the very start.
x87 was a seperate chip. No wonder it has always been treated as rather
seperate. :) That is probably also the cause of its lousy design. They
probably had no choice when it was a seperate chip, the stack interface
was probably the simplest given sharing the memory bus was probably not
something they wanted to do at the time along with putting memory access
hardware into the x87 chips.
Len Sorensen
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