[OT] Hell freezes over, pigs fly

[Dar Scott]

On May 23, 2005, at 2:18 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

>>
>> But, except for some of us who tinker at a very low level, I don't 
>> see how using Intel chips affects multi-platform consistency.
>
> I would imagine some externals could then be compiled only for x86, no?

I would think not.  Even if the the intel chips include the CPU.  I 
don't know if Linux applications can use Windows DLLs, even if they do 
not make system calls.  In general they would not.  The ABI could very 
well be very different for OS X using an x86 processor.  Even then, I 
expect the cut over would be at 64-bit processors and Intel encourages 
a very different calling convention for those.

Maybe the byte-order for some things like "wide characters" will be the 
same, but that may do little more than create a snobishness of the 
"right order".

Maybe PC emulators will then run faster on OS X.  (And maybe mac 
emulators)

There might be a few free bsd x86 utilities that take less work to 
modify for OS X under those circumstances.  Maybe.

OK.  How about this:  Some externals with a strong processor dependent 
part such as assembler would port with only the wrapper being OS 
dependent.

Dar
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