This is a _fascinating_ answer- the OBJ format dictated the processor features. >The reason is that the only programs that exceed 64K bytes in size are coded in high level language I very much don't buy this tho.
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(This might not be a fair comparison point, b/c 65xx family is a very bad fit for HLL, but most SNES games were written in assembly. Minimum size mandated by Nintendo for a cart according to my definitely-not-pirated manual: 256kB.)
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Unlike 6502, 65816 actually works pretty well for HLLs including C and Pascal. DP can be used to efficiently access stack frames.
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65816 even supports virtual memory and IP-rel code! Real world _existing_ C code doesn't deal well w/ banking (of either the 8086 or the 65816 kind) tho :(. Compilers for both archs have __near and __far for this, but I wish "automatically breaking up functions" was more doable.
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Banked memory isn't really usable from C except by treating it all as volatile. Best model is probably treating it more like a block device.
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AFAICT, few microprocessor architectures designed before the early 1990s had efficient support of C as an explicit objective, though some were OK for C mostly by accident. WE32000 in mid-1980s may have been the first specifically designed for C.
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What about NS32000?
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Possibly.
End of conversation
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