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From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 64 bits
Message-ID: <_9B5+F6@xds13.ferranti.com>
Date: 19 Aug 90 17:51:41 GMT
References: <5539@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <13285@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <30728@super.ORG> <13667@cbmvax.commodore.com> <40644@mips.mips.COM> <1990Aug8.042631.7093@nlm.nih.gov> <1990Aug8.215735.4197@zoo.toronto.edu> <46173@ism780c.isc.com> <9660@ganymede.inmos.co.uk>
Sender: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Reply-To: peter@hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 24

In article <9660@ganymede.inmos.co.uk> stevem@inmos.co.uk (Steve Maudsley) writes:
[machines with 16G of RAM will be affordable in the year 2000]

> You will need more than 32bits address space for these machines.

Depends on whether that's 16Gb of RAM per CPU or not. With 1Gb chips organised
in (say) 32bx32M for 128MB, a 2-chip compute server could cost the equivalent
of $20. Typical major software costs significantly more than this. With a ROM
file system using a single 16MB ROM chip containing the necessary junk to boot
UNIX (or equivalent network-capable O/S) and the software, and an ethernet,
FDDI, or whatever network chip you could sell software modules that you'd buy
and plug into your home PC (which would be a network with a display server
and file server running something like X+UNIX). The actual software could
easily be running on any CPU out there, with any native O/S. Compatibility
would be a matter of network type and network protocols...

For the low end user, 32 bits should suffice for a *long* time to come.
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
+1 713 274 5180.   'U`
peter@ferranti.com (currently not working)
peter@hackercorp.com


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