Register functions ?

Tom Haapanen [DCS] haapanen at watdcsu.UUCP
Thu Sep 13 12:10:08 AEST 1984


Now, on a 68020,

register foo() { ...

makes a lot of sense.  The 68020 has a 64-longword on-chip instruction
cache, and this instruction could be used to force a small function
into the cache *and keeping it there*.  I am not certain of the exact
cache locking mechanism used (but I know there is one!), since a
friend just borrowed my MC68020 manual...  

Naturally you couldn't do that to large functions, but it could make
small ones execute like a bat out of h*ll!  (especiall with the 68020
having clock speeds of up to 16.67 MHz...)

Tom Haapanen
{allegra,clyde,decvax,ihnp4,utzoo}!watmath!watdcsu!haapanen



More information about the Comp.lang.c mailing list