Re: [Qemu-devel] Updated >2G memory patch

[Blue Swirl]

On 9/30/07, J. Mayer <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-09-29 at 23:43 +0100, Paul Brook wrote:
> > > > Also note that changing variables from int to long have strictly no
> > > > impact on 32 bits host machines, then won't help emulating more than 2
> > > > GB of RAM. Another variable type (target_phys_addr_t ?) should be used
> > > > instead.
> > >
> > > This patch should be restricted to 64-bit hosts. I don't think it's
> > > useful to emulate a 64-bit target with huge amounts of virtual and
> > > physical address space on a 32-bit host.
>
> My feeling is that if it's restricted to 64 bits host, then it's a patch
> for geeks only, that brings no useful feature to the main end-users. In
> the real world, most people are still running in 32 bits mode.

I think Qemu is a geek application. The majority of people with their
i386 Windows PCs don't know or care about, for example Sparc32
targets, or even about Qemu. The people who know about Qemu are
probably geeks, they already have some kind of need to emulate
hardware. I'd think majority of them still want to emulate an i386
target on their i386/x86_64 host. Other targets and hosts are a
minority, making the people interested in those even geekier.

But whether this patch or something else is a geek feature or not is
irrelevant. What matters is whether it breaks something or not, or if
some part of the design is objectionable. I fully agree with you that
some parts could be designed differently.