After takin' a swig o' grog, Erik Funkenbusch belched out this bit o' wisdom:
> On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 17:43:05 +0100, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> "Valued customers" bug Neat Receipts over Vista support
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>| There, people wonder why it's just so difficult for firms to develop 64-bit
>>| drivers. Microsoft might be a better company to ask - but we suspect it's a
>>| huge sea change and we are just the flots and the jets being carried along on
>>| the top of an irresistible wave.
>> `----
>>
>> http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=42548
>>
>> Even some Microsoft products do not support 64-bit PCs. Of course, open source
>> drivers don't have this issue.
>
> I think the issue here is that, for a variety of reasons, Linux drivers are
> typically written in C, and not optimized to the Nth degree for performance
> like their Windows counterparts are.
What, you mean C code cannot be optimized? Cannot include inline
assembler?
> I'd dare say, most "performance" oriented drivers (video, sound, etc..) are
> written largely in assembly language to eek out every ounce of performance
> the hardware can give. This makes them less portable, and developers have
> much less experience writing 64-bit assembly. C drivers, unless you're
> really stupid, largely just need a recompile.
Or you can just use a somewhat portable assembler, such as gas (the GNU
assembler).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Assembler
Of interest:
http://sourceware.org/binutils/docs-2.17/as/Machine-Dependencies.html#Machine-Dependencies
Oh, it's "eke", not "eek", above. (Just FYI, not trying to bust your
chops on spelling.).
--
Tux rox!
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