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Re: Safe Pointers at the Intermediate Language or Hardware Level

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On 2/10/2014 9:11 AM, seimarao@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
>
>      Its been a long time since Java & .Net introduced safe address
>      types to the computing world.
>
>      My question is have we settled on what could be a proper representation
>      for safe pointers ?
>
>      Some Mainframes like the 390 have historically supported safe pointers,
>      I remember.
>
> Sincerely,
> Seima Rao.
> [I looked at my S/390 Principles of Operation, and I see a bunch of stuff
> for tracing, but nothing that looks like safe pointers.  I'd think it was
> hardware dependent, e.g., if a machine has a fairly clean and efficient
> trap for an unmapped zero address, you'd use that, but if it doesn't, you'd
> do something else. -John]
>

I'm an architect on the team doing the Mill CPU architecture
(ootbcomp.com/docs). We would love to do a full-blown capability system,
but regretfully have decided that's not viable as a commercial product.

A safe pointer (cap) is more than 64 bits, and people would refuse to
repeat the pain of the 32- to 64-bit migration. And most programs
violate safety (and language standards, but that's another issue), and
it's hard to make a sale when the customers keep saying "It worked on
Intel!".

Sad.

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Thread

Safe Pointers at the Intermediate Language or Hardware Level seimarao@gmail.com - 2014-02-10 09:11 -0800
  Re: Safe Pointers at the Intermediate Language or Hardware Level flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) - 2014-02-11 00:58 +0000
  Re: Safe Pointers at the Intermediate Language or Hardware Level glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2014-02-11 01:03 +0000
  Re: Safe Pointers at the Intermediate Language or Hardware Level Ivan Godard <ivan@ootbcomp.com> - 2014-02-10 20:45 -0800
  Re: Safe Pointers at the Intermediate Language or Hardware Level wclodius@earthlink.net (William Clodius) - 2014-02-10 23:03 -0700

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