8 bit pointers on a modern 32bit CPU

[Flux]

How many 8 bit pointers can be used by a 32bit CPU?


Perferably a ARM9,PowerPC G3 or Intel Pentium core.

 

[BRiT]

What is your real question?

 

[Npl]

Do you mean registers?
AFAIR the x86 can seperatly reference 2 bytes of each GP-register, that makes effective 12 8-bit registers - double the 6 32 bit registers.
Most RISC Architectures wont allow splitting registers like that, so it doesnt matter if you use 8bit or 32bit variables/registers - the amount of effective registers wont change.

 

[Davros]

cant you access a 32bit register as two 16bit registers and each 16bit register as 2 8bit registers ?
eg: ah, and al

 

[Npl]

cant you access a 32bit register as two 16bit registers and each 16bit register as 2 8bit registers ?
eg: ah, and al

Nah, goes like this, only 4 ways to access 1 register:

eax - 32 Bit
ax - lower 16 bit
al - lowest byte
ah - 2nd lowest byte

Googled up a nice picture aswell, seems you can only split 4 registers that way, and I was wrong with the number of GPRs ("General Purpose" is a big stretch on x86 anyway).

 

[Flux]

so multiple adds/subtracts(or decrements) this is only supported on x86 archetechtures?