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From: prins@prins.cs.unc.edu (Jan Prins)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 64 bits
Message-ID: <15674@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 17 Aug 90 15:21:09 GMT
References: <9660@ganymede.inmos.co.uk> <12502@encore.Encore.COM>
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
Reply-To: prins@prins.cs.unc.edu (Jan Prins)
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 20

jkenton@pinocchio.encore.com (Jeff Kenton) writes:

|> [...]  In addition to the question of what to do with 16Gbyte
|>(or 160 Gbyte) is the problem of how fast will machines have to be to
|>use that memory.  Right now, zeroing memory on a 16Mbyte machine takes
|>a noticeable number of seconds.  Will machines be 1000 times faster by
|>the time we have 1000 times more memory?

A machine with a lot of physical memory need not be restricted to have
a single processor.  I think it is within *current* technology to build
a 64K processor CM-2 or MP-1 with 256KB of memory per processor.  That's
16GB of memory that might also be serially accessible to a scalar processor
incorporated in the system which (just to tie in the subject line) would need 
>32 bits to address that memory.  To "zero" all of the memory, use all of the 
processors; it should take less than a second.

                               
--\--  Jan Prins  (prins@cs.unc.edu)       "The claim is `always'...
  /    Computer Science Dept.                 ... no, wait, it is `never'..."
--\--  UNC Chapel Hill