From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,9a441a9594e85d08 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Markus Kuhn Subject: Re: Bignum modular types in Ada95 Date: 1998/01/29 Message-ID: <34D04FFD.41C6@cl.cam.ac.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 320226891 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <34CE568C.55D7E23D@cl.cam.ac.uk> <34CF3E78.F816DB5@cl.cam.ac.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Cambridge University, Computer Laboratory Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-01-29T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert A Duff wrote: > >Handling 1024-bit integer arithmetic in the Ada compiler and not in > >some library package has the advantage that the compiler will later > >be able to do much better optimization (e.g. automatic register > >allocation), once we get CPUs with 1024-bit integer registers and > >ALUs, which I expect to happen in the next three years. > > Are you talking about special-purpose hardware? I doubt if 1024-bit > registers will exist in general-purpose computers any time soon. (I > reserve the right to redefine "soon" at will.) No, I am talking about the standard off-the-shelf Pentium successor in a few years, not about any exotic special hardware. IPv6 and electronic commerce will make it necessary that normal workstations can to thousands of 1024-bit modexp operations per second for authentication protocols. This is commonly expected to be the next major functional extention after MMX. 20-dollar smartcard microcontrollers have such 1024-bit registers/ALUs already available today. It is just a matter of time until we see them in workstation processors. > Anyway, having the feature "built in" gives other advantages: literals, > range checking, case_statements, etc. None of that works with some > library package (unfortunately). Agree. Dear Ada compiler developers, please have a look again at builtin bignum support! Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK email: mkuhn at acm.org, home page: