Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!sharkey!atanasoff!hascall
From: hascall@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (John Hascall)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: ATTACK OF KILLER MICROS
Message-ID: <1633@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu>
Date: 19 Oct 89 14:29:17 GMT
References: <35825@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <1081@m3.mfci.UUCP> <35979@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <2450@odeon.ahse.cdc.com>
Reply-To: hascall@atanasoff.UUCP (John Hascall)
Organization: Iowa State Univ. Computation Center
Lines: 19

In article <???> bga@odeon.ahse.cdc.com (Bruce Albrecht) writes:
}In article <???>, brooks@vette.llnl.gov (Eugene Brooks) writes:
}> Unfortunately, no 4 processor system will ever need more than 32 bit
 
}Oh really?  CDC has several customers that have databases that exceed 2**32 
...
}We already need pointers larger than 32 bits.  IBM's AS400 has a virtual
}address space greater than 32 bits, too.

   I don't know about CDC, but the AS/400 uses what is called Single Level
   Storage, that is, all memory and disk are in one humongous address space.

   Many people do require more than 2**32 bytes of disk farm, but very few
   people are using 2**32 bytes of memory space--so in a more typical system
   the need for (pointers) more than 32 bits is rather uncommon %

   John Hascall

   % although I'm sure we'll hear from a number of them now :-)