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From: bcw@duke.UUCP (Bruce C. Wright)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: 4 -> 8 -> 8/16 -> 16 -> etc.
Message-ID: <4109@duke.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Mar-84 17:30:42 EST
Article-I.D.: duke.4109
Posted: Thu Mar 22 17:30:42 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Mar-84 07:14:52 EST
References: <934@ihuxm.UUCP>
Organization: Duke University
Lines: 14

That's just it - there might be some relatively small market for a
64-bit micro, but it's doubtful that it will ever be commercially
viable in the sense that the IBM-PC or the Apple were/are.  The
vast majority of users could hardly care less about complex numerical
work - they just want to edit letters, run spreadsheets, etc., none
of which particularly need either 64-bit registers or a 64-bit
address space.  I suspect that most of the 64-bit designs which
may come out will be like the Cray:  expensive relative to other
machines, and devoted primarily to special-purpose uses.  Nobody
denies that there *are* such special-purpose uses, but they are
probably less than 0.1% of the entire computing scene.


			Bruce C. Wright