Re: GNU gcc/g++ with 386 segmented architecture.

>I would like gcc and g++ on an Intel 386 but with a segmented architecture
>i.e. pointers are 48 bits (a segment (DS/ES/FS/GS) and a base/index/offset).
>[GCC believes very strongly that its target machine has a flat address space.
>It may be doable, but it'd be a huge project. I've never seen a C compiler
>that did 386 large model. Are there any? -John]


I know of gcc ports to segmented architectures; the z8000 is one of those, I
believe.


For the 386, there is, however, no real point -- the 386 (and later, of
course) only handle 32-bits worth of memory. The segments take
segment:offset and translate it to a logical memory address (32-bits worth),
and then pass that off to the MMU. It is not possible, as a result, to have
multiple 4Gbyte segments in the machine, and each segment that you *would*
have would have to be restricted to a contiguous real address space. If it
were possible to associate pages with a segment identifer, then, well,
things would be quite different ;).
--

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