+<p>While these address spaces may seem similar to TLS via the
+ <tt>thread_local</tt> keyword, and often use the same underlying hardware,
+ there are some fundamental differences.</p>
+
+<p>The <tt>thread_local</tt> keyword applies to global variables and
+ specifies that they are to be allocated in thread-local memory. There are
+ no type qualifiers involved, and these variables can be pointed to with
+ normal pointers and accessed with normal loads and stores.
+ The <tt>thread_local</tt> keyword is target-independent at the LLVM IR
+ level (though LLVM doesn't yet have implementations of it for some
+ configurations).<p>
+
+<p>Special address spaces, in contrast, apply to static types. Every
+ load and store has a particular address space in its address operand type,
+ and this is what determines which address space is accessed.
+ LLVM ignores these special address space qualifiers on global variables,
+ and does not provide a way to directly allocate storage in them.
+ At the LLVM IR level, the behavior of these special address spaces depends
+ in part on the underlying OS or runtime environment, and they are specific
+ to x86 (and LLVM doesn't yet handle them correctly in some cases).</p>
+
+<p>Some operating systems and runtime environments use (or may in the future
+ use) the FS/GS-segment registers for various low-level purposes, so care
+ should be taken when considering them.</p>