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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Boolean array representation question
Date: 1997/11/22
Date: 1997-11-22T00:00:00+00:00	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <dewar.880207946@merv> (raw)
In-Reply-To: mheaney-ya023680002211970030030001@news.ni.net


Matthew says

<<If your compiler optimizes for speed, it's going to use the most
time-efficient way to get the value of a component.  For a Boolean, it
makes the most sense to allocate some integral number of storage elements
for each component.  It could be 8, 16, 32, whatever.  The value 8 seems to
be the best compromise between time and space.>>

No, this misses the point. On almost all architectures, the reason for
choosing a component size of 8 is driven by semantic requirements for
independence. FOr a full discussion of the independence issue for
shared variables, see Norman Schulman's thesis on shared variables
(Robert Dewar advisor, NYU, about ten years ago), or for a summary,
read my Ada 9X paper on shared variables.





  reply	other threads:[~1997-11-22  0:00 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
1997-11-20  0:00 Boolean array representation question Jerry van Dijk
1997-11-20  0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1997-11-21  0:00 ` John P. Lippiello
1997-11-22  0:00   ` Jerry van Dijk
1997-11-22  0:00     ` Matthew Heaney
1997-11-22  0:00       ` Robert Dewar [this message]
1997-11-23  0:00       ` Geert Bosch
1997-11-24  0:00         ` Larry Kilgallen
1997-11-24  0:00           ` Robert Dewar
1997-11-22  0:00     ` Robert Dewar
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