From what I understand, crafty is basically a 64-bit calculator, so
***COULD*** run a lot quicker on 64-bit hardware. But when I build
crafty on my 64-bit Sun Ultra 80 (4 UltraSPARC CPUs), I have two
choices.

1) Compile as 64-bit C code, without any assembler code.
2) Compile as 32-bit C, with 32-bit hand optimised assembler code
supplied in the crafty source code.

There's not much difference in performance between the binaries, but
clearly if there were 64-bit optimised assembly code, a 64-bit version
should run a lot quicker.

Has anyone developed replaced the 32-bit assembler routine (Sparc.s),
with a 64-bit version??

I know Robert Hyatt has developed 64-bit interfaces to some of the
newer 64-bit processors (Opteron etc), but he is not exact
complementry of the performance of Suns - to be honest, I feel Sun
have lost their way in the workstation market.

Anyway, if someone has a 64-bit version of Sparc.s, let me know.

I've written x86 assembler myself, but never tried SPARC. I have a
book on SPARC assembler, of which I've never read.
--

Dr. David Kirkby Ph.D CEng MIEE
Author of 'atlc' http://atlc.sourceforge.net/