[erlang-questions] 64-bit erlang

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

"Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)" <ulf.wiger@REDACTED> writes:

> How about using 32-bit words inside the process heap, and
> "far pointers" to any off-heap data (including other
> processes)?

No. Programming with mixed pointer sizes is a nightmare.
If we start rewriting the emulator now, we will probably have
it ready when you can buy 16 Gb of memory for $10. :-)


Note that binaries don't take twice as much memory. Use binaries.

What might be feasible for us to do is to provide more compact
storage of data in ETS tables. Since the data is always copied
to and from ETS, it could be possible to compact/expand data
while copying. This is of course not trivial, but could be doable
in a reasonable time (other things on our to-do list would have
be delayed, of course).

It could also be possible to somewhat shrink the Beam code to
better use the larger word size (packing more operands into one word).
The savings would probably be minor, but could be still be worthwhile
as it is relatively straight-forward to do.

/Bjorn
-- 
Björn Gustavsson, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB