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From: usenet@nlm.nih.gov (usenet news poster)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Extremely Fast Filesystems
Message-ID: <1990Aug8.042631.7093@nlm.nih.gov>
Date: 8 Aug 90 04:26:31 GMT
References: <5539@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <13285@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <30728@super.ORG> <13667@cbmvax.commodore.com> <40644@mips.mips.COM>
Reply-To: states@tech.NLM.NIH.GOV (David States)
Organization: National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md.
Lines: 37

In article <40644@mips.mips.COM> mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) writes:
>However, I'd STRONGLY disagree with the idea that 64-bit machines will
>remain confined to the super- & minisuper world for 10-20 more years.
>I propose instead:
>	a) We are currently consuming address space at the rate of 1 bit year.
>	b) Plenty of applications already exist for workstation-class machines,
>	for which the devlopers bitterly complain that they only have
>	31 or 32 bits of virtual address space, ...
>
>So, here's my counter-prediction to the idea that it will be 10-20 years:
>
>No later than 1995:
>	1) There will be, in production, 64-bit microprocessors
>	(and I mean 64-bit integers & pointers, not just 64-bit
>	datapaths, which micros have had for years in FP).

Maybe, but aside from address generation and floating point, what are
people going to do with all those bits?  Setting aside address arithmatic,
most of the time you don't need 32 bit integers and lots of work involves
bytes or smaller (character strings etc.).

>[...]
>So, here's a thought to stimulate discussion:
>	What applications (outside the scientific / MCAD ones that
>	can obviously consume the space) would benefit from 64-bit
>	machines?

Using 64-bit chunks makes me wonder about non-numeric data representations.  
You can pack 8-12 characters of text in 64-bits, enough for most English 
words.  Or how about small images (8x8 or 7x9 fonts etc.)? Pattern recognition
using small neural nets operating on one or two registers of input data?  
An instruction set rich in bit manipulation could be a big help in 
exploiting these possibilities.

>-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>

David States