Re: [Emc-developers] on the integer question by Rene

[Robert S. <rm...@un...>]

Am Montag, dem 08.06.2026 um 09:07 +0800 schrieb Luca Toniolo:
> On 64-bit masks being hypothetical: they already exist. The EtherCAT 
> distributed clock is a 64-bit value and the Beckhoff EL5032 puts a 
> 64-bit count on the PDO, both in linuxcnc-ethercat now. The hi/lo
> split 
> is what we do today, and it's the thing to avoid, not the fallback:
> two 
> pins tear (low from one cycle, high from the next, off by 2^32) and 
> tools can't show the real value.

It is not obvious if those enourmous ranges of values really are needed
and if it could be acceptable to limit the range.


Anyway, it is a tradeoff, the question is what is more inconvenient,
having different pin types that are a hassle and require a number of
conv_X_Y components and generally complicate everything or having to
deal with some exceptional cases where 64bit integers would have to be
either truncated or split into two pins.