64bit programming

64bit programming

What is needed?
1.New compiler
2.New High level Language enhancement
3.New Assembly language enhancement
4.Just good programmers.

Guys tell me which of them are needed and which of them are not.

 

Just found this
The first 64bit architecture to emerge was the AMD64 Instruction Set Architecture.
AMD64 ISA is the backward-compatible extension of the industry-standard
(legacy) x86 architecture.It adds 64-bit addressing and expands
register resources to support higher performance for
recompiled 64-bit programs.

QUOTING AMD

The AMD64 architecture introduces these new features:
- 8 new general-purpose registers (GPRs).
- All 16 GPRs are 64 bits wide.
- 8 new 128-bit XMM registers.
- Uniform byte-register addressing for all GPRs.
- A new instruction prefix (REX) accesses the extended
registers.
- Up to 64 bits of virtual address.
- 64-bit instruction pointer (RIP).
- New instruction-pointer-relative data-addressing mode.
- Flat address space.

In 64-bit mode, eight new GPRs are added to the eight legacy
GPRs, all 16 GPRs are 64 bits wide, and the low bytes of all
registers are accessible. Figure 3-3 on page 31 shows the GPRs,
flags register, and instruction-pointer register available in 64-
bit mode. The GPRs include:
-Sixteen 8-bit low-byte registers (AL, BL, CL, DL, SIL, DIL,
BPL, SPL, R8B, R9B, R10B, R11B, R12B, R13B, R14B, R15B).
-Four 8-bit high-byte registers (AH, BH, CH, DH),
addressable only when no REX prefix is used.
-Sixteen 16-bit registers (AX, BX, CX, DX, DI, SI, BP, SP,
R8W, R9W, R10W, R11W, R12W, R13W, R14W, R15W).
Sixteen 32-bit registers (EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX, EDI, ESI,
EBP, ESP, R8D, R9D, R10D, R11D, R12D, R13D, R14D,
R15D).
-Sixteen 64-bit registers (RAX, RBX, RCX, RDX, RDI, RSI,
RBP, RSP, R8, R9, R10, R11, R12, R13, R14, R15).

END OF QUOTE

So according to the AMD method to 64bit programming,
New Assembly language enhancement are needed and maybe other
64bit architecture will need them.I hear pentium has decided to allow compatibility with the AMD64 ISA.

So enhancement to Assembly Language is needed?

 

compilers recomended by amd

1:Absoft Pro Fortran v8.2
2:Franz Allegro Common Lisp
3:The 64-bit build environment in the release of the Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 DDK includes a 64-bit compiler you can use to build and test 64-bit driver code that runs on AMD64 processors. The following sections describe the AMD64-specific aspects of this compiler.
4GI Fortran and C High-Performance
Compilers and Tools from The Portland Group

5:There is a tricky stuff here AMD allows 64bit compiling on microsoft visual c++,
but they do not use "inline assembly" they use compiler intrinsics.
I dont know if Microsoft made the compiler intrinsics with 64bit in mind
or if AMD uses bios or assembly enhancements to convert these intrinsics to 64bit.

Are new comiplers necessary?

 

Taking in the fact that using compiler intrinsic functions
are through Highlevel language,maybe it is true to say that highlevel language has been enhanced in this particular case(vc++).Isnt it?

 

Quoting AMD

To run in 64-bit mode, legacy 128-bit media programs must be
recompiled. The recompilation has no side effects on such
programs, other than to provide access to the following
additional resources:
?? Access to the eight extended XMM registers (for a total of 16
XMM registers).
?? Access to the eight extended general-purpose registers (for a
total of 16 GPRs).
?? Access to the extended 64-bit width of all GPRs.
?? Access to the 64-bit virtual address space.
?? Access to the RIP-relative addressing mode.

End of quote

Recompiling is needed in this case.No highlevel code changes.

 

Interesting links:
http://www.assembly-journal.com/viewarticle.php?id=149&layout=abstract
http://bmagic.sourceforge.net/bm64opt.html
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/faqs/64bit.xml
http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/programming/64bit/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/using/building/64bit/default.aspx