[...]
I can't speak for anyone else, but I definitely have discussed this
issue with a large number of people. I can't tell you in which specific
fora, because it usually became a very brief conversation since there
really is only one plausible answer (*especially* in the light of the
precedents set by other architectures.)
Ingo's mention of it on LKML in this email:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/1/25/287
... is pretty typical of how the conversation usually went.
-hpa
--