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Dernel: Protected mode far pointers in D?
Mar 03, 2004
Robert M. Münch
Mar 03, 2004
Jeroen van Bemmel
Mar 05, 2004
Robert M. Münch
Mar 06, 2004
Walter
Mar 06, 2004
Robert M. Münch
Mar 06, 2004
Scott Wood
Mar 04, 2004
Walter
Mar 05, 2004
Robert M. Münch
Mar 05, 2004
Scott Wood
Mar 06, 2004
Walter
Mar 06, 2004
Mark T
March 03, 2004
Hi, I found this quote:

	A disadvantage of all the mainstream IA-32 compilers is that they assume a flat 32-bit address space, with CS, DS, ES and SS each having the same base address. Because they don't use far (48-bit seg16:ofs32) pointers they make it a lot harder to write code for a segmented OS. Programs on a segmented OS written in C would have to rely on a lot of assembly code and would be a lot less efficient than programs written for a flat OS. However, at the time of writing, Watcom are still promising to release their OpenWatcom compiler, which will supposedly support far pointers in 32-bit protected mode.

Can the D compiler use protected mode far pointers? Is it an issue to care about at all?

-- 
Robert M. Münch
Management & IT Freelancer
http://www.robertmuench.de
March 03, 2004
> Can the D compiler use protected mode far pointers? Is it an issue to care about at all?

How many "segmented OSs" can you list?


March 04, 2004
"Robert M. Münch" <robert.muench@robertmuench.de> wrote in message news:opr39xslc8heztw6@news.digitalmars.com...
> Hi, I found this quote:
>
> A disadvantage of all the mainstream IA-32 compilers is that they assume a flat 32-bit address space, with CS, DS, ES and SS each having the same base address. Because they don't use far (48-bit seg16:ofs32) pointers they make it a lot harder to write code for a segmented OS. Programs on a segmented OS written in C would have to rely on a lot of assembly code and would be a lot less efficient than programs written for a flat OS. However, at the time of writing, Watcom are still promising to release their OpenWatcom compiler, which will supposedly support far pointers in 32-bit protected mode.
>
> Can the D compiler use protected mode far pointers?

No. I know all about protected mode far pointers in the 16 bit compiler and the grief it causes.

> Is it an issue to care
> about at all?

No. <g> Nobody has ever asked for this capability for 32 bit code generation for 15 years. Writing one would imply one needed a bigger memory space for a program than 2 gigs. But these days, if you need that, you'd be better off programming for the new 64 bit chips.


March 05, 2004
On Wed, 3 Mar 2004 21:06:25 +0100, Jeroen van Bemmel <someone@somewhere.com> wrote:

> How many "segmented OSs" can you list?

Hmm... I don't know. I tried google but didn't found anything. However, I'm not that a big fan of x86 (this is mostly due being an old Amigian with 68x assembler know-how) but x86 is pretty advanced these days and using segmentation seems to be a valuable option.

-- 
Robert M. Münch
Management & IT Freelancer
http://www.robertmuench.de
March 05, 2004
On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 10:54:10 -0800, Walter <walter@digitalmars.com> wrote:

> No. I know all about protected mode far pointers in the 16 bit compiler and the grief it causes.

Hi, I can remember some parts too.

> No. <g> Nobody has ever asked for this capability for 32 bit code generation for 15 years. Writing one would imply one needed a bigger memory space for a program than 2 gigs.

Which happens these days quite fast... at least in enterprise applications.

> But these days, if you need that, you'd be better off
> programming for the new 64 bit chips.

Are these than supported by the D compiler? ;-)

-- 
Robert M. Münch
Management & IT Freelancer
http://www.robertmuench.de
March 05, 2004
On Fri, 05 Mar 2004 13:43:15 +0100, Robert M. Münch <robert.muench@robertmuench.de> wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 10:54:10 -0800, Walter <walter@digitalmars.com> wrote:
>> No. <g> Nobody has ever asked for this capability for 32 bit code generation for 15 years. Writing one would imply one needed a bigger memory space for a program than 2 gigs.
> 
> Which happens these days quite fast... at least in enterprise applications.

Segmentation won't help there, though.  The result of a base+offset calculation is still a 32-bit virtual address.

32-bit segmentation (beyond basic fixed values for CS and DS/ES/SS) is mainly useful for the transparent relocation/growth of pointers, but it's really not worth it IMHO.  Even with compiler support, manipulating segments (and storing the larger pointers) is going to cause significant overhead and lots of programmer headaches.

-Scott
March 06, 2004
"Robert M. Münch" <robert.muench@robertmuench.de> wrote in message news:opr4d2ydf0heztw6@news.digitalmars.com...
> > But these days, if you need that, you'd be better off programming for the new 64 bit chips.
>
> Are these than supported by the D compiler? ;-)

Not yet, I don't even have a 64 bit machine. But that's where things are going.


March 06, 2004
"Robert M. Münch" <robert.muench@robertmuench.de> wrote in message news:opr4d2mbseheztw6@news.digitalmars.com...
> On Wed, 3 Mar 2004 21:06:25 +0100, Jeroen van Bemmel <someone@somewhere.com> wrote:
>
> > How many "segmented OSs" can you list?
>
> Hmm... I don't know. I tried google but didn't found anything. However, I'm not that a big fan of x86 (this is mostly due being an old Amigian with 68x assembler know-how) but x86 is pretty advanced these days and using segmentation seems to be a valuable option.

It would be a differentiating feature! But it'd be crippled by the lack of tools for writing segmented 32 bit code. Instead, how about these features:

1) The x86 CPU's have 4 privilege levels. These are unused by windows, and I think linux too, which runs everything at the max privilege level (or they only use 2 of the 4 levels, I forgot the details). This is why security is so difficult on windows/linux, as everything is essentially root. Using the 4 levels enables you to create a *hardware* sandbox for running, for example, internet apps. This is inherently much more robust than software sandboxes such as Java's vm or .net.

2) Expose the full functionality of the virtual paging hardware to application programming. This will enable better/faster garbage collectors to be written. For example, the gc could read the 'dirty' bit on a page to see if it needs to be scanned. In fact, gc should be part of the os core functionality, so that all gc'd languages can have access to it.


March 06, 2004
On Fri, 5 Mar 2004 18:52:17 -0800, Walter <walter@digitalmars.com> wrote:

> It would be a differentiating feature! But it'd be crippled by the lack of tools for writing segmented 32 bit code.

Hi, yes right, that's the impression I get too. IMO for user applications it doesn't make any sense to muck around with this x86 feature. But using such features only on the kernel level and making it transparent to applications might be an option. I'm going to investigate this further.

\justification

Why to care anyhow? As I undestand current approaches, he problem is that there is no 4GB of memory available to user applications. That's mostly because the kernel needs to map in the address space as well. Hence the well known 1GB/3GB or 2GB/2GB slice. So, getting as much memory as possible in the fastest way is something that applications will benefit from.

/justification

> 1) The x86 CPU's have 4 privilege levels.

Yes, that's a nice feature being available in hardware.

> These are unused by windows, and I think linux too,which runs everything at the max privilege level (or they only use 2 of the 4 levels, I forgot the details).

Aha, I didn't knew this. Interesting... I expected that this feature is used.

> This is why security is
> so difficult on windows/linux,
> as everything is essentially root.

Do these use the x86 protection features for segments or are those checks done within a some kernel internal code?

> Using the 4 levels enables you to create a *hardware* sandbox for running, for
> example, internet apps. This is inherently much more robust than software
> sandboxes such as Java's vm or .net.

Yes, good point.

> 2) Expose the full functionality of the virtual paging hardware to
> application programming. This will enable better/faster garbage collectors to be written. For example, the gc could read the 'dirty' bit on a page to see if it needs to be scanned. In fact, gc should be part of the os core
> functionality, so that all gc'd languages can have access to it.

The latter option is the one I'm interested in. With the OSs I know, you now have several layers of memory-management, starting from the virtual paging hardware, thru the OS, up to application level. My idea is to get the GC as much down to the metal as possible and than provide very simple, fast and lean interface to it. Even C/C++ code can have an implementation of memory functions using the GC than.

Thanks for the ideas and the information.

-- 
Robert M. Münch
Management & IT Freelancer
http://www.robertmuench.de
March 06, 2004
In article <c2be3f$ul1$2@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter says...
>
>
>"Robert M. Münch" <robert.muench@robertmuench.de> wrote in message news:opr4d2ydf0heztw6@news.digitalmars.com...
>> > But these days, if you need that, you'd be better off programming for the new 64 bit chips.
>>
>> Are these than supported by the D compiler? ;-)
>
>Not yet, I don't even have a 64 bit machine. But that's where things are going.

not in the embedded world, we just moved to 32 bits :)


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