Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!fernwood!portal!cup.portal.com!ts
From: ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: MIPS, Compaq and Microsoft in bed - NYT story
Message-ID: <39184@cup.portal.com>
Date: 12 Feb 91 10:43:25 GMT
References: <29920@usc> <45758@mips.mips.COM> <3188@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
  <frazier.666294724@oahu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 21

I can think offhand of two good reasons for more than 32 bits
right now.

	1. It would not be unreasonable for someone to want to
	have more than 4GB of *physical* memory in their
	machine.

	2. Wouldn't arbitrary precision arithmetic routines
	run quite a bit faster if they could work 64 bits at
	a time rather than 32 bits at a time?  This becomes
	important to people who want to use public key
	cryptography.

	3. Many problems that need floating point will now be
	able to be done in fixed point and still have adequate
	precision.

I know I said I had two reasons - pick whichever two you like the
best from the above three.

						Tim Smith