Because global registers are faster! This is exactly the kind of
stuff that is properly CPU-dependent and should be treated as such.
Heck, it even depends on what kind of multiprocessor architecture, if
any, you're using!
That being said, I belive that on most, if not all, processors, the
idea of having the pointer point not to "current" but to a per-CPU
memory area is *very* appealing, and a change that should be made
uniform unless it's a significant lose on some machines...
-hpa
-- <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private! "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt <amsp@zytor.com> - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/